Scratch Building a Mercury Marlin

I was going to say it looked very similar to the Long Ships that I vaguely remember seeing landing, invading, visiting the beaches of the North Eastern coast of the Shetlands a little while ago. I didn't as I thought that I might be stating the obvious.

Dry fitted the wing today. Should've checked earlier. The mounting strips are barely wide enough to allow decent contact with the fuselage. So, off with the original strips/rib caps and fitted wider ones. Planking is finished on the top half of the fuselage, seems that I'll have to assemble the bellcrank, pushrod and leadouts, glue the wing to the fuselage, then complete the planking.

Fitted the bell crank, leadouts and elevator pushrod. Hinged the elevator using old fashioned ribbon tape hinges. PVA is much easier to use than balsa cement for this job!
Next is to position and fix the fuel tank, solder up the engine mounting bolts to a strip of tin plate and fit to the front bulkhead. Then to finally fix the wing assembly to the fuselage, and complete the underside planking. I thought I might fit a drop off U/C as the model is designed to be hand launched, not an easy thing to do, especially as the model is so small.