Excellent progress allover, my friend @gblair! Always helpful to stop between each step to figure out your follow on plan, especially on WWI models.

Thanks, Spiros (@fiveten) and John (@johnb). It is nice to finally be moving forward again.

Looking good George, your patience and eye for accurate detail is paying off.

Looks perfectly fine, George @gblair
The black cowling is a good choice.

The upper deck looks great George (@gblair). That is a nice example of thinking through a conversion requirement and finding the right solution.

I also like the continued improvements on the paintwork. Masking the fuselage numbers worked out good.

I agree with your approach to get the smaller bits done earlier. I have found too often in the past that I tend to rush through these if I delay doing them until the end of the project. A good time to do these sorts of tasks is when you have a lot of cleanup / filling seams / sanding / riveting / etc.

I had a bunch of unexpected tasks from my wife today, but I still got some time to muddle through the landing gear. I started with a test fit of the gear struts and the small airfoil between the wheels. It took a lot of fiddling and trimming of the strut mounting pins to get the gear assembly to sit correctly. I taped everything in place and then glued all the parts together using liquid glue. I repainted damaged areas around the center deck with some deck tan in preparation for some replacement streaky camo. Tomorrow I hope to add the small bits, get the hand-painting done, and then think about adding the top wing. I don't want to jinx myself, but I think the triplane is getting close to the end.

2 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Very nice progress, George @gblair
Don't tell me about those extra tasks, I know exactly what you mean 🙂

Lots of non-modeling hurdles to get over yesterday and today, but managed a little time to move the triplane forward. After spending a lot of time decided the best way to add the top wing to the plane, I finally got it done. Luckily the top wing has very simple, non-complex attachment points. I started by gluing the struts to the top wing. This is made easier by the fact that they are at a right angle to the span of the wing. I checked for a 90 degree angle using a ruler with a right angle. I let them dry for several hours. I then added the top wing to the plane and adjusted its position until I was satisfied. I took a long length of tape and applied it to the left and right side of the wings to hold everything in alignment, then I applied glue to the attachment points on the middle wing. After double-checking everything, I let it dry all day while I was taking care of a bunch of other stuff. When I came back this evening and removed the tape. Everything looked good, so I then added the smaller struts from the upper wing to the fuselage. They all seemed to fit fine, so I glued them in place and will let them dry overnight. I hope to get to the paint touchup tomorrow and add all the small bits. Cheers.

6 attached images. Click to enlarge.