Well now, back to the subject at hand. I spent a half hour here and an hour there over the last week or so between other tasks and can update you with a bunch of stuff.
First off, I checked on the problematic fuselage inserts and found that a bit of filling and sanding was needed to hide the seam. it wasn't as bad as on my last build and I'm very close to calling that done but will do one more test shot before I commit.
On the cockpit side, I went through my previous build and remembered that a few mods were needed to depict a proper seatbelt arrangement. First of all, the shoulder belts need to be routed over a bar attached to the back armour rather than directly over the back of the seat so this had to be scratch built:
The resin seat shown earlier, though nice, displays the early Sutton harness with the supplemental shoulder belts which I ignored on my previous build. This time, I decided to get rid of the additional belts and carved them out. I then re-etched the pattern in the back rest and painted the remaining belts and back rest. The back armour was then painted black and new shoulder straps made of Tamiya tape were then threaded behind the bar and painted. I had attached the seat before this and you can see the scars where I cut it off again. It was too high and had to be lowered.
Here's the seat reinstalled and the new tape seat belts attached to the resin buckles. The drape doesn't look quite right but it works for me.
On the other side of the pit, the instrument and side panels were painted and detailed on the sprue.
And here they are installed in the pit. Yeah, Hasegawa forgot the compass. Will I add one this time?
More to come no doubt. Thanks for looking in.