Thanks for the compliment. I may have a go a fixing the D to a P with a fine pen and brush.
Meanwhile, I got the matte coat on and wrestled the upper wing into place. I kinda rushed myself into doing the matte coat without thinking first about doing a panel wash so I'll need to do some careful highlighting after the fact. I'm going for a relatively clean look though as I'm assuming these aircraft would have had lots of opportunity to be well maintained before Italy declared war on France.
The upper wing placement went about as good as could be expected; not all of the struts fit the contours of the lower wing and a few were way off. The process I used was to attach the center struts first using CA on the end of a toothpick and then lining up the rest in sequence working my way outwards toward the wingtips. Because of the tight quarters, some of the CA pooled and dried in the nearby painted surfaces so I was forced to file the bumps down, sacrificing the previously applied camo which will need to be touched up.
The large gaps like the one above were filled with my Terracotta Milliput. I rolled a thin worm of this stuff and stuffed it into the gaps with the end of my scalpel then shaped the material with a toothpick and a wet, stiff paint brush. After allowing this to dry, I will file these areas smooth and repaint.
My initial stab at using stretched sprue for the control lines wasn't very successful as the fragile material sagged and in some cases broke. I discarded them and replaced them with 0.2mm brass rod, a bit thick but much stronger and straighter. After painting these should look acceptable. Again some touch up will be needed were I got some excess CA onto the finished paint. Note also the pitot tube made with brass rod and the nav light painted red with a tiny bubble of CA placed on the end to represent the lens.
That's how she sits as we speak. More to come soon. Thanks for looking.