First query - interior colours.
The instructions say the cockpit should be H61 'flesh' - I guess that means varnished wood. Not quite. Interior visible fabric should be dark reddish-brown, " the colour of tautening dope.." according to friend Bob who had a long career as ground crew in the RAF. The flash has somewhat 'lightened' the reddish colour in the shot below. Not much is visible anyway.
Having read a number of other build reviews out there it seems that joining the fuselage halves might be a little tricky. I noticed a similar issue and a possible solution on the recent Spitfire Vc - glue the fuselage halves together first and insert the cockpit from underneath when you get to this stage. For the best join of the fuselage halves I glued the forward fuselage first, inserting the cockpit from below when dry, prior to sealing up the rear of the fuselage. This worked well..no filler required on the fuselage anywhere, unlike just about every other build out there on the net..
Given that I always make a mess of the paint finish when rigging, I decided to rig as much as possible prior to painting. This is relatively straight forward for the tail feathers. Note that the rear fuselage machine gun trough section required no filler - unlike most other builds I've seen. The trough part fits into a u shaped slot in the rear bulkhead of the interior framework, but thanks to my method of joining the fuselage halves, there were no gaps! Note clear parts masked off on the lower forward fuselage -before fitting wing struts as you won't easily be able to access them.
