Thanks gentlemen.
Builder 2010
I thank you for the kind words and I'm hoping that your questions are rhetorical and that you don't want me to answer them all. There's plenty of info online that you can refer to.
This last week has been devoted to trying to figure out what's going on with the wheel wells and that's why I have nothing substantial to show. I have a myriad of excellent photos and references from Terry, Geo, and Grant and these are allowing me to check reality against what's been provided in the kit. Below are two pics that Terry gave me (thanks pal!) that I have annotated. Note the arrows pointing to what I believe to be the main spar of the wing and the portion that apparently transits through the wheel well:
Note also that, with the exception of the entry points of the spar, there is only a single skin that forms the cowling in the wheel well area.
Here's what the kit provides:
The wheel wells are defined by two halves of a rectangular styrene box to which the undercarriage struts (white metal), retraction frame, and the wing spar attach. Photoetched panels that represent the side wall details are also provided.
With the assembly dry-fitted sans PE, the immediate observation that can be made is that the wheel wells form a box WITHIN the curved surface of the cowls and so present a much more restricted area than in reality. There is also a lack of detail on the frames that allows for a positive connection of the parts to ensure that the walls are correctly spaced - in other words, the frames are free to "float" between the walls.
Now for the kicker. The well assembly is secured into the lower wing half with pins so that there is no chance of improperly locating the part and, once assembled and pinched between the upper and lower wing halves, we can see how things line up - or not.
Note how much the spar details are misaligned. The spar detail in the wheel well is a full 6mm aft of the moulded detail on the wing that supposedly represents the same spar. I have checked this several times now and have yet to figure out what's happening here and so I need to dig a little further into this. Is the moulded spar in the wing correctly located? Hope so as I can't do much about that. Are the individual parts in the well correctly located? Is the entire wheel well correctly located? All of these need looking into and I'll need to track down some good scale drawings for that.
A further look from the side shows the rather clumsy intersection of the well box with the rest of the cowl. The PE wouldn't help as it simply follows the contour of the well sidewalls.
I know at this point that I will be discarding the sidewalls and building up the wells from inside the wing halves. Before doing that though, I'll need to understand what's going on with the spar and I'll be back if and when I have more info.
Thank you all for your interest and if you can offer some insight into the spar problem I'd love to hear about it.