I'm finally able to report some more work on Yellow 3. After my two week trip to Kazakhstan/Kyrgyzstan, I was busy getting over the jet-lag and posting all of the photos from the trip on Facebook. 900 photos spread out over 11 albums! After getting the photos done, it was just a matter of venturing back into the man-cave after a month layoff. There were days where I had free time but for whatever reason, I didn't feel the urge to get back into modeling. I hadn't really gotten into the "meat" of the build and there were still some nagging questions about how the Aires resin cockpit/wheel well was going to fit so there wasn't a definite piece of work or task that I was looking forward to... that uncertainty and lack of momentum was a factor in my delaying my return.
But eventually, the call to get back onto Yellow 3 pushed me back into the man-cave. Rainy day here in Southern California so that helped. First order of business was to get a better handle on the resin components and how they fit with the kit parts. Access to the detail to facilitate painting and secure attachment of the parts were primary concerns besides the actual fit. I may have gone through this process already but I can't remember anything concrete about it so repeating it would help me familiarize myself with the kit again. Forgive the redundancy!
Dry-fitting resin parts that have no positive location aids is like building a house of cards so I needed to make some temporary glue attachments. The rear cockpit bulkhead was attached to the cockpit tub using white glue. I also white-glued the forward cross-truss onto the bottom of the cockpit tub. Attachment of the straight-edged truss onto the curved cockpit tub was very tenous so I used a big glob of glue and let it dry overnight.
The sidewalls were taped into place after the glue was dried.
This assembly was placed into the fuselage, which has been taped together. No real locations aids to snap the tub into place. I just butted it up against the kit bulkhead.
I slipped the wings on to see how everything fits. The wheel well inserts have been taped into the wing parts beforehand. Looked ok initially with a few concerns. One is the gap/overhang between the wheel well inserts and main wheel well sidewalls. I think I can address that when the assembly is glued into the fuselage by applying glue between the sidewalls and fuselage and spreading the sidewalls outward. Another is that the resin piece that bridges the wheel well longitudinally came up way short, meaning that the forward cross-truss is located too far forward.
When I flipped the model over, the kit bulkhead at front of the wheel well opening popped loose. Based on the position of the seat, I think the cockpit tub is situated too far to the rear but the bulkhead coming loose may have disrupted the fit.