Thanks guys.
A few progress pics showing the sublime to the ridiculous. Let's start with the sublime fit of the wing to fuselage joint. I actually thought about not gluing this at first as the fit was so good:
The wing tips were equally impressive and the thicknesses matched exactly.
And now for the ridiculous. The fact that Eduard chose to mold the upper nose cowl in two halves has been much criticized in reviews and rightly so. All that beautiful surface detail will be lost in trying to get the seam perfect. I kind of understand why they did it though as the cowl is bulged and turns in on itself. This would have been tough to accomplish in an ejection molded kit.
Here's how it turned out after I glued the halves together and restored the panel line and rivets. Some minor filling was done with primer.
Also a little ridiculous is the build up of the otherwise lovely exhaust stack assembly. Each side consists of 4 parts which are a bit fiddley to put together. Here you see the starboard assembly in place and the port still in pieces. Oddly, the stacks for the port side in my kit had a molding deformity in that the open ends of the stacks ended up on bits of plastic that extended beyond the true ends of the stacks and these had to be cut off. I therefore ended up having to hollow out the ones on that side and this turned out well (pics in the next round).
With the exhausts, cowl, wings and stabs now in place, here's how she looks as of right now:
I will be getting close to painting now and will want to depict the bare aluminum in a dull, weathered manner rather than a bright, polished look. I do have a selection of Alclads but am not keen on their Dull Aluminum as it seems to finish with a gritty appearance. I'll be thinking about some options and would welcome suggestions on this.