Not near done, and I may need to undo some things (hate it when that happens!), but I appreciate the vote of confidence.

This is going to look magnificent once finished. Well done!

Alright, I've completed the engines. Here you see one of them, the Quickboost R-2600, modified with styrene rods and copper wiring:

Here's the stock unfinished engine on the sprue that comes with the kit:

Side by side for comparison:

Here's my finished rear gunner's station:

Dry-fitted:

Note that with the rear gunner's position I used a Dremel wheel (then sandpaper) to grind down the exterior walls to make them thinner for a closer cosmetic fit. The gaps will be closed when I glue it in place, then CA glue to fill.

As Louis says, comments encouraged!

Really nice work on the engines! Great improvement, as seen by the side-by-side view. The rear gunners position is also quite an improvement.

WOW David ! Your work looks fantastic ... I normally build my kits right out of the box, so it doesn't really take too much time. But when you're scratch building it's much more time consuming.
The results are definitely worthwhile though... Simply look at the side by side differences between the kit supplied R-2600 and the "Quickboost" version... It's night and day. The same goes for the rear gunners station...

This is going to be a beaut !

Well done sir !

Firstly, you must be chuffed with way the group is panning out, David - some really inspirational things happening - an especially exciting last few days!

I feel your pain about 'finishing', my personal misery is in filling and rescribing - it's probably why I build so slowly!

Your previous work belies that comment however, and this is looking fantastic - interiors are just outstanding and the engines are brilliant - can you find a way to keep them on show?

David, I was just musing on whether you could leave a panel open or a cowl off to leave the wonderful detail work you have produced on show?

As to the gaps I have looked long and hard at the list and have had a number of other builds run through my mind - however the Storch looks suitably complex, and I am in for two 'cat' builds. However, I may well come back for another look at the list later as the official reveal is a little way off! Anyway for now I'll 'under promise and over-deliver' if possible!

Hey Julian, thanks. I copied the technique of a guy I saw on another site. It takes patience and time, but it adds quite a bit to stock (or aftermarket) rotary engines. That hobbyist's argument was that rotary engines are basically fish in a barrel when it comes to an opportunity to upgrade detail--real engines have visible wiring, and adding it is not that difficult (even if it can be a bit tedious). Cockpits, in contrast, for all the aftermarket attention they get, often result in work that cannot be easily seen or seen at all, especially if we opt for a canopy closed configuration. Anyway, my thoughts.

The organization of pics is a feature of iModeler. When you upload your pics (suppose you include 6 of them in your post), they are marked as {pic1}{pic2}, and so forth up to {pic6}, except they will use--and you must use--brackets like this [ ] (I cannot use them because the site wants to insert pics when I do!). Otherwise the same as you see here: lowercase, no spaces, and a digit) but at the bottom (end) of the post. To insert them, just type what you like, then retype the reference to the photo you want to insert there:

blah blah blah...

{pic1}

blah blah..

{pic2}{pic3}

blah blah blah blah...

{pic4}

and so on...