Back home and back at it with a sore back.
I enhanced the cockpit by adding some hydraulic lines to the undercarriage selector, an oxygen hose, hand drawn placards, and cables on the control column.
Oddly, the PE belts that Eduard provide with this kit are the early Sutton harness type which are almost certainly inappropriate for this late production Spitfire. I was able to find a set of late war belts in my spares stash so I went and installed those.I further added the retraction cables and hanger using stretched sprue. I'll go back and slacken the belts a bit as they look a bit stiff now that I look at the pic.
With that done, I went and glued the fuselage together, taking care to line things up carefully and not mar the fine details near the seam behind the pit. The seam in front of the windscreen did not fully close despite my coaxing so I glued a piece of stretched sprue to this location which will fill the seam nicely after it's filed and sanded down. There is no surface detail in this area so I can go to town here and not worry about obliterating anything.
Moving quickly now, the wings were also glued together after I remembered to drill out the holes for the bomb pylons.
Eduard actually provide a de-icing tube with the kit. I must admit that I didn't see it on the instruction sheet before I assembled the radiator tubs to the lower wing. Installing it after the fact was a bit of a tricky operation and I ended up losing the part as it was so small. The simple remedy was to drill a hole from the inside of the wing and insert a piece of lead wire before I glued the upper half of the wing to the lower half. After the CA glue had set, it was relatively simple to bend the soft wire to the desired L-shape.
That's it for today. Hopefully I'll find a groove again and post more regular updates. Thanks for looking in.