Alright, here are my thoughts from what I experienced. The instructions will screw you up if you do it their way. Here are my suggestions.
1. Don't attach the cockpit to the lower fuselage like the instructions show, the pins are too loose and it forces you to attach it when you close the fuselage, which in turn hides the mounting sockets for the engine bearers making that installation, that much tougher. It can also effect the wing fit !
2. Test fit the cowling over the gun bay early on, don't know if it was me or the kit but my cowl would not fully seat without carving away part of the guns back of the barrels. The gun barrels seem to align properly with the holes in the forward cowl so I'm thinking it's kit issue.
3. Glue the wings to the fuselage prior to installing the lower fuselage piece, I found that with the lower fuselage piece in place, I got a gap at the forward part of the wing join. Glue the upper edge of the wing and flow some glue back into the spar slots and let cure thoroughly, the wings fit well done this way and should require no filler.
4. On the engine assembly attach the three duct work pieces to the lower cowling rather than trying to attach them to the oil cooler per instructions. They drop right into place in the cowl and you can glue them from the inside, no glue marks outside and no fiddly fit when you install the lower cowl.
5. Attach the engine assembly prior to installing both the upper cowl over the gun bay and the lower fuselage piece so as to have access to the engine bearer mounting sockets, if you don't you be installing them blind.
6. Once that is done then install the bottom fuselage piece, I found I needed to sand both the front edges a bit to get it to fit. That is what was causing the wing gap. You can now install the cowl over the gun bay. I found that thinning the rear edge over the instrument panel helped the fit here as well.
7. Expect to have a gap between the forward cowl and the cowl over the gun bay, you may not but it seems to be the norm. I plan to just add a thin piece of styrene to the rear of the main cowl and cut and sand to fit.
In any case test fit, test fit, test fit. Again this has been my experience yours may differ.
One other thing while I'm thinking of it, I lost both of the plastic pins for the outer aileron hinge, damn things are to small to get a grip on, I ended up holding the mounting bracket on a sticky side up piece of tape and used a small piece of solder through the bracket trapping the mounting piece. I then used super glue (thick) to hold the solder on the outside of the bracket. When the glue dried I cut off the excess solder. On the middle hinge, rather than try gluing the three pieces of PE together per instructions, mount the one piece in the aileron, the other in the flap and trap the mounting piece between them when you install them on the wing.
I have some photos but they are still in the camera, I'll try to post some tomorrow if it would help. All in all I'm pleased with the overall fit but there are a few aggravations to over come. I hope this helps !
...
