Hello, Stephen! have you tried to raise a little the pilot position in the DATA.ini instead to build a bulge in the plane? Some 3rd party planes have the sme problem (Bristol Scouts, BE-2D...). I have solved the problem in these planes this way. No need to moddiffy the 3D model.
For example, for the BE-2D, we had:
[Pilot]
SystemType=PILOT_COCKPIT
PilotModelName=wwiPilotNew1
SeatID=1
SetCockpitPosition=TRUE
Position=0.00,0.419,0.942
MinExtentPosition=-0.45,1.8,0.0
MaxExtentPosition= 0.45,1.0,1.2
CanopyNodeName=Seat_F
And I have now (look at the Position line):
[Pilot]
SystemType=PILOT_COCKPIT
PilotModelName=wwiPilotNew1
SeatID=1
SetCockpitPosition=TRUE
Position=0.00,0.419,0.978
MinExtentPosition=-0.45,1.8,0.0
MaxExtentPosition= 0.45,1.0,1.2
CanopyNodeName=Seat_F
I hope this can be of some help!