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You think the D.VII frame is a bear (and looking at the instructions, I have no reason to doubt you), wait until you get hold of the D.VIII's handling of the same assembly, as well as the entire interior frame as it fits to the floor, to the rear bulkhead, and finally the connection across the two side frames.
I've spent my entire evening doing this...wait, I started at 7:30 p.m. and it's now 2:48 a.m. and I'm just about to install the PE throttle quadrant and the cross member that has the two extensions that lead up to the gun breaches for some reason.
But there is a silver lining behind this back-stiffening, headache-inducing frame business: somehow Eduard has become the first to actually get the assembly pretty near perfect scale diameter with their representation of the metal tubing that makes up this framing. So if I can't stand back and admire the finished cockpit for at least 15 minutes, I will feel quite cheated. For after that, it will go into the cockpit. There, just as will the molded in V-former of this D.VIII (as used also in the D.VI and Dr. I), which I spent a couple of hours making appear to be two different types of wood, it will disappear into a space that you can only see through a hole less than a half-inch wide, that being the cockpit opening.
So, we are either sadists, love what we do, idiots, or just sticklers for detail. Pick one or more which best describes us all who tackled this unholy framing.
TOM
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T.E. Bell
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