I finished up the remaining 3/32" sheeting on the fuse all the way up to the firewall and on up to the top deck. Next I determined that the exact mounting position of the FPE 3.2 engine would require a 1/2 inch spacer in order to get the prop to be the right distance from my cowl. I cut a firewall extension spacer out of birch ply and mounted it to the former firewall. This spacer has 6 holes in it to mount it to the firewall and the engine to them both. I used 10-32 Blind Nuts for all mounting here, in addition to epoxying the spacer to the firewall as well. Two of the six holes only go through the 1/2 inch spacer, and the other four go all the way through the firewall.

With the gun tubes complete, I proceed to extend the fuse sheeting by planking on over the countour of the gun tubes and forward formers using more 3/32" balsa sheeting... This was no picnic! I planked it on past F2 to create the dash area that lies behind the upcoming windshield portion of the canopy. I plan to do a complete scale detailed cockpit interior, so this sheeting/planking will serve as a base to build my interior detail on in the future.

With the topdeck completely planked, puttied and sanded to a relatively smooth surface, I moved on to running the nyrod tubes for the throttle linkage, and eventually the balsa ring that goes around the perimiter of the firewall face. This ring then had to be sanded to a curved in shape, and some air flow cuts had to be sanded into them like hash marks on a clock.