As is my wont, the kit-provided cockpit details are being upgraded or replaced for what I consider to be a more realistic representation of reality. Below is a picture of the floor and one of the sidewalls before taking a machete to things:
I decided to discard the sidewalls and build up my own framing using plastic rod as seen here. The wall of the fuselage now represents the outer skin and I embellished this area with strips of stretched sprue to resemble the details seen in photographic references.
The floor has had the framing in front of the seat replaced with delicate trusses made of wire and stretched sprue. On the seat, the rails on the sides of the saddle were sliced off and replaced with wire. The throttle console was cut off and moved outward. The instrument panel and rudder bar will remain essentially unchanged, except that the triangular gizmo at the pivot point is wrong and has been removed.
For the colours, I read up on several builds in this forum and decided to use straight Tamiya XF-21 Sky to represent the Verde Anticorrosione colour. I sprayed the shadow areas flat black first and then sprayed the XF-21. This was followed up with highlighting of the frames by brushing on the same XF-21 lightened with white.
On the right side, the Eduard console has been added and the instrument box from the kit sidewall was added as well after slicing it off the sidewall. I wish Eduard would fix their bluish shade on what is supposed to be a black finish. The difference is magnified with the camera and not worth the effort to brush black around all the details.
The tub has been painted and highlighted with the same mix of lightened XF-21 and holes cut in the floor as seen in reference pics.
The control column was then installed with an actuator rod at the rear and the electrical leads to the guns were added using lead wire.
Finally, the PE instrument panel and gun cocking handles were secured in place.
Thanks for checking in and hopefully I can get some momentum going on this build.