That's clearly a metal wing on the museum Dolphin. Knowledge of that particular plane's history as one of the very last Dolphins built, and the inspection panels visible on the undersides, make that clear. I think we all can agree on that. It was one of the very last Dolphins built and one of the very few with metal wings, and therefore not representative of almost all Dolphin production, even before being heavily modified into its present configuration.
What matters, at least to me, is that it isn't representative of the planes we included in our package. I did paint that plane in its earlier incarnation as the Boeing "Rover," and I didn't bother to put in those little inspection panels. I know that's not completely authentic, but it was the only civilian executive Dolphin I could find color information for.
The photos show that even the metal winged Dolphins had smooth-surfaced, sheet metal wing skins. In his article, Pete Bowers says that those last few metal-winged Dolphins had partially fabric covered wings, but he doesn't tell us what parts were fabric covered and he shows us no photos. I suspect it was the ailerons and some other sections, but the photos of the museum plane are no help with that.
Anyway, I guess we can all agree that the Dolphins all had smooth wing skins, whether plywood or aluminum, and that's how the model depicts them. I can live without the inspection panels on the Rover.
Gaucho, I'm sorry if my reaction to your initial post seemed harsh. I wasn't pleased, after weeks (months, really) of careful research, to have someone come along and announce after just a quick glance at our model that we got it rather drastically wrong, and display what they describe as a "correction" that looks less like the real thing than what we did. I'll bet you wouldn't like it either if the shoe was on the other foot.
I hope that's the end of this discussion. I can't add anything further.
