Good Bad News

Today I moved on to the next section of the cockpit seats, with the intention of removing the gasoline tanks. However, I found that the ply used is completely different from the last section I had to replace and is in fact in very sound condition - almost like new. That's great, it means I don't have to replace it all. But I did want to get rid of those gasoline tanks, and that's the bad news. The tanks are huge, and when they were installed they must have completely disassembled the seats to put them in place. There is simply no way of removing them without either taking the seats apart completely, or getting in there with a disk grinder and cutting them up.

I have elected to leave them be. I'll reassemble everything, then we can paint the cockpit out.

No way I'm just popping that out of there. Note the old edge of the seat and the newer extended edge,