Some more progress on my Tupolev.
Even though I'm not sure whether I'll pose the bomb bay doors open, I added internal frame detail to the roof of the main bomb bay with styrene strips:
Oh, completely forgot this when posting, I also worked on the main U/C bay doors. The outsides have a pattern of very finely recessed rivets, but the insides are blank, so I added corresponding framing from styrene thin strip.
As I anticipated, the main landing gear support struts couldn't quite take the handling, one of the fixed broken struts breaking again when removing from the sprue.
Instead of fiddling with the flimsy bits anymore, I promptly cut off all of them, drilled a hole through each U/C gear leg and glued in copper wire. Simpler than the styrene they replaced, but certainly sturdier.
Now I just have to hope I don't break the parts while bending down the wire struts...
The outer wings were assembled from the usual upper and lower halves, nothing special worth mentioning. Fit was good, although the trailing edges will require some putty to make a cleaner uniform edge. The ailerons were a bit of a surprise, as they required quite a bit of cutting and filing to fit properly in the neutral position. Out of the box, both the left and right ailerons fit well in a "down" position, so to pose them fit uniform, a step had to be filed in the upper back edge.
When I got the ailerons glued on properly, I started with the landing light that was in the right wing on this particular aircraft. Pleasantly simple after the chore of fitting the ailerons:
1) measure, mark and cut a slot in the leading edge
2) clean up the slot and glue in styrene sheet to form a boxed-in space
3) trim off excess styrene sheet
Next I'll have to dig into to the spare parts box to see if I got something to make the lights. If not, I gotta make them from scratch.
That's it for this time. Hope you like it so far.