Excellent work Centurion!! She looks lovely:)
I need to confess that when I mapped my external model of the F-5a I'd made the mistake of collapsing the meshsmooth modifiers together with uvunwrap .. which meant that I could not revert to the low poly model
without having to re-map the entire thing!
I've since however reverted to a saved copy of the original model which I'm tuning and will eventually re-map so that I can use the lower poly models as lods.
A lot of time wasted; but what to do .. this is my first project and I'm learning along the way!
Getting back to your F-5E, I'd like you to know that my gauge work (or anything else you could use from my F-5a 3d pit) is available to you should you need it.
Regards
PM me If I can help