I spent several hours this afternoon assembling the port wings and rigging. The first order of business was to tackle the buckling issue with the outer strut x-bracing. I didn't take pictures of the port side before I addressed this but the same issue occurs on the starboard side as demonstrated by this dry assembly:
The solution is to free the PE connections at the bottom, cut off the forks there as well as the nob on the tab on th ebottom of the sruts to allow free up and down movement of the PE part. It's also necessary to file the tab thinner so that the PE is not pinched so tightly in the slot in the wing.
After fiddling with the port side this way, a dry fit shows that the braces remain straight.
So here's how I made sure I started on the right foot. I took out my granite tile, which I use as a true, flat surface, and clamped the fuselage and dry-fitted upper wing center section. Nothing is glued here yet and the alignment of the fuselage and center section was checked by measuring the distance of equivalent right and left points against the tile with my vernier, seen at left in the background. Once I was happy that the fuselage and center section with sitting flat and parallel with the tile, I tightly dry-fitted the wings and made sure that the lower wing remained flat against the tile (it had no dihedral at all) and made sure that there was no gap showing at the joints. Being happy with the fit and alignment, I then dabbed thin CA glue into the attachment points of the struts and allowed it to set. The wings were then removed and the Tamiya Extra Thin cement was run into all remaining joints. I then set the assembly aside for an hour or so to harden up.
I then started adding the PE rigging piece by piece. I originally took some progress pics but, in the interest of space, I simply posted the finished product below. Now I did anticipate, based on several recorded observations, that I would have to deal with rigging that was too long but I actually found that the lateral bracing fit reasonably well. It's important to insert the straight ends first and to increase or decrease the depth to the point where the other end fits exactly into the slot provided. I found that the straight ends, though meant to be inserted straight into the opened slots, had to be bent somewhat, otherwise they emerged from the slot at the wrong angle and induced a bow in the rigging. Through trial and error in adjusting that bend point, I was able to finsd the sweet spot where the rigging remained straight and, as soon as I had a proper fit, I dabbed a bit of thin CA at each end to fix the wires in place.
Here's the finished product:
I did have trouble with the forward wires going form the top to the intermediate point and strut on the lower wing. These wires are actually provided as a single piece of PE which made this a pain to work with. What's more, the damned thing slit on me where the two wires connect to together making it extremely awkward to get them installed. I lost the tab so the ends on the top wing ar just held wiht a blob of CA. The inner strut X bracing was definitely a bit too long and I had to snip maybe .5 mm off each end to avoid the dreaded buckle.
I'm not sure what you call it but the horizontal rod that sits in the saddle of the lateral braces was made of styrene rod as I didn't like that the PE part provided had to be folded and ended up being flat. I'm amazed that it came out close to parallel with the wings and pointing straight ahead!
So, it's one side down and one to go. The next wing, being folded, will need a different approach to ensuring alignment. I'll think about that before launching into that side. In the meantime, thanks for following and for the great comments.