Thanks, Spiros (@fiveten), John (@johnb), and Erik (@airbum). Hope to get some work done today, but we are dead center in the path of a total eclipse, so I plan to spend some time outside in the dark. 80% chance that clouds will obscure the event, but it will still get dark. Cool.

How was the eclipse, George @gblair? Looking forward to seeing some F86 pics!

Hi Spiros (@fiveten), Felix (@fxrob), and John (@johnb): The sky was completely covered in clouds until about 20 minutes before totality, then the clouds opened up and we had a perfect view. Got the lawn chairs out, put our viewing glasses on, and then watched the big event. Once in a lifetime stuff. Today we have thunderstorms and tornado warnings, and it is really humid. Probably not much painting today.

3 attached images. Click to enlarge.

I have had a very interesting interlude in moving this kit forward. I have a resin seat for this plane, but I wanted to see what I could do with the kit seat. Over the last few days I took the basic kit seat and sanded the sides until they were scale thickness. I cut holes in the side of the seat for the belts, and one in the back for who knows what. I then created and added arm rests, a seat cushion, new foot rests, a disconnect for the oxygen hose, and ejection seat handles. I managed to lose the headrest over the last few days, so I designed a new one and printed it in my 3D printer. I still need to add the Eduard belts to the seat and finally add an adjust rod to the seat. I added the Eduard 3D resin instruments to the instrument panel and cockpit tub. The last task today was to create a throttle quadrant for the left side of the cockpit. With that done, I was ready to move forward on the rest of the plane. I would love to show you the pictures I took, but I haven't been able to import photos into iModeler for almost a week. Hopefully I can figure out why I suddenly can't import photos.

Cheers

Great progress, my friend @gblair! Looking forward to the pics!

I think I have remediated my photo upload problems by using my 12 year old Apple laptop to communicate with my iPhone. This seems to work, for now. Here are some photos to catch up with where I am.

5 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Looking super so far, my friend @gblair! Great that you found a solution for uploading!

Thanks, John (@johnb), Spiros (@fiveten), and Felix (@fxrob). I hope to get moving on both models today. I have grandpa time coming later today, so I am not sure how much time I will have. All of my photo upload problems started after Apple did an update on my phone. So, apparently my phone will talk to Apple computers, but not PCs. Figures, right?