Well, here I am again trying to keep this thread active. I've found a new photo hosting site, village.photos which seems to be the preferred option for my fellow IPMS Ireland members who were affected by the Photobucket withdrawal of service. Hope this one doesn't cause me the same problems in the future.
Despite that setback I've been able to make some more progress on the build.
I've now managed get the starboard trailing edge positioned (A). The process for this was the same as the port side, with pins needed to fix it securely in position. The inner wings were skinned, starting with the starboard side (B) allowing for the cutout that will continue onto the starboard outer wing. The port section, between the spars, is skinned and the hinged nosing for the air intake is positioned (C).
Then the skinning was continued to the starboard outer wing top.
Because of the cutout, this needed to be done in two parts, above the rear spar (here) and below. As you can see, it needed a fair bit of clamping to get good solid adhesion across the wingspan. The steel rulers were again pressed into service to give a constant pressure across all of the skins.
Once dry, the same technique applied to the rear section the following day.
This then left the leading edge of the wing to be added. So here's the finished wing with the clamps removed and the leading edge nosings in place. These came pre-cut and shaped, tops and bottoms, but needed a lot of additional work to get them to follow the curve of the ribs more accurately. The top part of the cowling (black) was dry-fitted to ensure the fits were accurate
Next, fairings were added to both sides of the two inner engines (A).
The undercarriage doors should be added at this stage but I fear they'll be easy to damage, so I won't add them until the end of the build.
Finally for this update, the underside of the starboard wing was checked, before the leading edges were added, for a test fit of the cowling.
All the cowling sections, unusually, are supplied in two halves in clear Perspex – the idea being that you could choose to display the engine insides this way, if you choose. As this is the engine that I intend to leave fully exposed, I'll partially cut away a section of this cowling to display the oil tank. The cowlings sides are joined before they're positioned but this is complicated by the fact that, once again, no locator pins and holes are included to ensure perfect matching, so hence the importance of test fits to ensure that the full cowling will be the same width at the join points for the front section.
The lower split flap need reinstating but I now think that it will be easier to install the aileron and full aileron hinge, to both wings, before I do this.
Both outer wings are now fully skinned and almost ready for attaching to the inner wing sections. However, there's filling and sanding necessary before I do this and it will be easier to work on them before they're attached to the fuselage.
We'll leave it there for now. I'm hoping that, before my next post, I'll be able to get some work done on reinstating some of the missing photos from my previous posts, starting with the most recent.
Gerry