The SBD had 4 foothold steps for the crew to access the cockpit, one on each side at both front and rear seat positions. These recessions into the fuse were fabricated by first building 4 small "boxes" out of balsa sheeting. Next, the boxes were lined with 10mil styrene, curving the two top corners and leaving about 1/16" or so sticking out at one end. The back end was closed up with another piece of styrene.

Four holes were then cut into the fuse side for the 4 step positions and the steps were glued into position from the inside of the fuse. Lastly, each step had putty applied and sanded to blend the edges of the steps into the sides of the fuse. The 1/16" styrene extensions provided something of the steps to stick into the balsa sheeting and the balsa box butted up against the inside sheeting wall.

I built the radiator scoop out of 1/16" and 3/32" aircraft ply, glassed with .75oz cloth, since it needed to be durable and could get hit by a lot of overflow gas. Once glassed and primered, I epoxied it into position.

The fullscale scoop was adjustable so they could open or close it at various angles to control cooling depending on engine temp and weather. I set mine to about 75% open. Note a few other scale details added in the final scoop picture at left.

The SBD had a "trio" of formation lights on the rear fuse underside, just behind the center flap of the wing. I decided not to weaken the fuse by cutting holes into it for recessed lights with lenses, since they will be rarely visible and I couldn't find any colored lenses to fit the bill. I decided instead to use some more craft shop nick nacks to simulate these lights.

I used some very large colored and highly reflective sequins, that looked quite a bit like colored glass lenses. These sequins were cut down to size, one red, one amber and one blue. The blue light was actually green, but like other green lights on the SBD, they looked blue when not lit.

I then made cover plates/rings out of 10mil styrene and glued the sequins to the back of them. The finished light fixtures were then sealed with a few coats of clear spray lacquer and epoxied to the fuse. They're not perfect but convincing enough for the underside of the plane!