Hello PM's, once again thank you for your reactions, and welcome aboard.
@Don: When I was a 7-8 year old my granddad used to take me to Schiphol Airport, which is near the place my grandparents used to stay. I always remember watching these KLM DC-8's and DC-9's from the public promenade deck and smelling the kerosene. Still, whenever that smell is lingering in the air, I am reminded of those carefree days.
Back to the model. I started preparing the wings by installing the box structure through the fuselage but then thought it might be better to do the empennage first. These are parts without internal structure and I'm not so confident it will survive the handling of the model undamaged. So I decided to make the reinforcements myself. For the vertical fin I used 1mm thick cardboard and a skewer protuding through the fuselage and resting against one of the internal tail section formers and for the vertical stabilizer I used a 2mm diameter brass tube, bent in the correct shape.
To make stabilizers and vertical fin more rigid, I laminated them on the inside with 160 grams paper. All in all a bit of trial and error and I spent most of Saturday morning to get the job done.
For proper alignment of the parts I used a blown-up sized copy of one of the instruction drawings for reference and while I'm writing this, the glue (acetate-based) is still hardening for the horizontal stabilizers, which I will leave undisturbed overnight.
That's it for now, time to turn to some domestic duties
.
Erik