Bulldog - bits and pieces

 I have managed to get the seat to fit. I realised that it was sitting too far back on the bearers, so all I had to do was break them off and then reattach them so that the seat is further forward. And now it fits very nicely. So my careful calculations were correct after all. No need to trim the seat or do anything drastic. It just shows that when you face a problem like this, it is best to leave it for a while, and definitely not do anything hasty.

 There was still one remaining problem. The adjustment lever got in the way of the framework and prevented the seat sitting centrally. So I broke that off as well and made a new one and then repositioned it so that it's clear of the framework; and I made a better job of the release button this time.

 While I was mulling over the problems with the seat, I realised that there was a bit more work to do at this stage, before painting and assembly. The fuselage itself is pretty much ready, but then there's the centre section. In the kit, the whole lower mainplane is one piece, and attaches to the fuselage via a big rectangular location lug, which engages with cutouts in the fuselage halves. In theory, the big rectangular location lug will be visible after the fuselage is closed up, and there lies the problem.

For the sake of completeness, I decided to tidy up this area and make it a bit more representative of the real thing. Another close reading of David Luff was called for, and this threw up enough info to come up with a basic concept:

Apparently, the struts connecting the fuselage to the centre section formed an M shape, making a total of 4 connections to each of the two spars. There was a central bay, with an aerofoil section either side, formed with 3 ribs. The lower surface of the central bay was covered with an aluminium panel, and the aerofoil sections were covered with canvas top and bottom. In the absence of other information, I assumed that the upper surface of the central bay was not covered: this would save weight if nothing else.

 What this amounted to in this build was the following work schedule:

1. Remove location lug and carve out a recess that represents the central bay
2. Enlarge opening in fuselage halves to correspond to central bay
   
3. Add centre section struts
4. After painting, add tiny pieces of rod to represent the fore and aft spars.
   

 Here is what I ended up with for the centre section struts (you might notice that I've already added these struts in the pics above):

 And this is what it looks like in a test fit:

 All very promising. And I will definitely make a start on the painting quite soon.