The rear area has a substantial flooring walkway, gun mounts and ammunition feed tracks, which then align the two bulkheads together into one complete assembly.
The completed unit then pops into place on the fuselage.
Some light drybrush weathering and a wash is best done now before the area becomes inaccessable when the fuselage is closed up.
Moving forward, the True Detail resin cockpit seats are prepared, you can see the marked improvement over the kit parts.
They do tidy up nicely with a coat of Alclad Steel on the frames and leather for the seats.
The Eduard instrument panel also looks pretty neat, not that much will be seen through the small canopy windows.
The cockpit sub-assembly can now be fitted into the fuselage half.
Once again some weathering with drybrush and a wash to highlight detail.
No weight is needed in the nose, as the Mk1 was a tail-sitter while on beaching gear, you would need significant amounts of lead if you are doing a PBY5A Amphibian version. The model is tail-heavy, so to counter this and as I am intending to display without the beaching legs and wheels, I will counterbalance this with weight under the stand.
What you don’t see here is how I am mounting the model, two bolts epoxy’d into the underside will fit into a flat box stand base.