Thanks, Spiros. It will be good to get the major construction done in short order. I will do more riveting on the fuselage before attaching the finished wings, but that shouldn't take too long. The fit of the wings to the fuselage is perfect and the alignment spar is very solid.

Latest update. Doesn't look like much but I actually put in hours of work. Here's a brief summary: I carefully painted, assembled and attached the engines, figuring I would preserve the option of having removable cowlings.

Unfortunately, I quickly learned that this is the sort of model that you have to leave the panels off if you want the engines to be visible. Each bay is just too crowded so the panels don't fit well enough to be free of gaps and bulges when the engine is covered. Having come to this conclusion, I decided to simply make sure the engines were aligned well enough for the props and spinners to fit well. Lots of dry fitting involved and also removal of parts of the engine to get the cowling on, esp. for the starboard engine. I got the cowlings to fit nice and snuggly for the port engine. Finally I was successful for both engines and able to dry fit the spinners and back plates to align perfectly on both sides. Lots of tweaking to do so but worth the effort. I plan to leave the slightly ill-fitting top cowling unglued on both sides until the end. This will allow me to fit the aftermarket resin exhaust stacks properly when I am at that final stage. I am accepting the imperfect look of this for now, knowing that everything will line up very well when glued down in the last stage of the build. Now it's on to a bit more riveting and cleanup of the fuselage before gluing on the wings. They are just dry fitted for now. More soon.

Some great progress, Colin @coling
A pity about those cowlings indeed.