Red Five i-16 build

The floor of the eduard cockpit needs to be rebuilt. But the instruments panel is so recessed that I opted to stick with the decal...
The seatbelts are attached to a small 'wire' (plastic thread) and the rudder pedals get straps made from leftover bits of PE frets. 

A simple interior, which eduard over-simplified, and the placement of the parts (including the instruments panel) is vague. 

The inside of the front exhaust scoops need to be thinned out. The exhaust tubes (which need drilling) can be added after the fuselage is glued together, before the engine cowl is placed.
The control wires are made with thin metallic piano wire. They won't be very visible, so that should do. 

The engine is hardly visible, so I won't spend much time on it. I do wish I had the PE part to close it partly, but I will stick to it 'open'.
I did build a more believable front intake with a bit of depth. 

A few big things overlooked here : the opening between the exhaust scoops (with simple interior detail), the glazed wheel-retraction windows (and hole for the retraction wire in the proper place!), the spent ammunition exhaust (only one made so far). That's a lot of simplification, eduard !
At least the fit is quite good, as is the detail present. 

The Pak-1 gunsight needs rebuilding too : it has a reflector gunsight and a secondary sight on the side (and not in front as eduard has it in the PE parts !).
The exhaust pipes were laboriously thinned out, one by one... But the i-16 is such a simple machine that small details count for much. 

Even the glass on the reflector gunsight is wrong : it should be square, not rectangular. 

The corrected gunsight, and correction for another set of glaring oversights : the light holes to illuminate the instruments and the grab handles... 

The back of the propeller spinner made with a simple disc of styrene. 

Nearly finished now : the undercarriage with its wires and counter struts added in the back of the main landing gear. 

The Shvak MGs were thinned out (looking more like 20mm. cannons originally!) and the pitot tube replaced (but still needs final details).
I have since realized that the wings red stars are too far outward... confirmed by the pictures of the original airplane : they should be about even with the aileron actuator. I will change them. 

The Begemot decals worked out well with Micro Sol, even where they must wrap around the root of the rear ailerons. 

Happy with the decals so far, a few more stencils to add (on each moving surface). I traced a simple black line with a fine marker on the leading edge of the tailplanes, continuing the fuselage's black band. I won't worry about the white outline though.
The gunsight and cockpit detail seem ok now. The MG covers on the fuselage seem to stick out too much, and so does the door. I would probably thin them out if I were to remake the kit. 

And now a few original pictures, since they are hard to find. M. Yakushin in front of one of the Red 5 i-16s. The wing is partly visible on the 2nd aircraft and it's clear that they have the larger red stars (Begemot is right, eduard not), and that I messed up on the position of mine !
A bit puzzled about how dark the interior of the door looks.
The Pak-1 gunsight is very visible too. 

Kletsov, also a Red 5 pilot, in front of another (?) i-16.

The serial number is so small, I don't know if I will keep the much larger Begemot one. 

The Red 5 pilots on the ground, with Yakushin on the left. The picture is dated 18/08/1939 and it seems to have been taken on the same day as the one of Yakushin alone.
There seems to be an i-16 jacked up in the background.