Well OK then!
In the book "Carrier Pilot", by Norman Hanson, he states that the little scoops on the sides of the FAA Corsairs were installed to vent out built-up exhaust gases from inside the fuselage. The side vents presumably brought in fresh air that was then exhausted through another vent on the bottom of the fuselage carrying the noxious stuff with it. To make the side vents, I first determined, based on scaling the pic above, that a 1.7mm diameter rod would be appropriate for the base material. I cut a length of this, clamped it into a vice, and flattened one face.
Then the two adjacent faces were also flattened with a file....
..upon which cut lengths of plastic card were glued.
A rough filing to shape, followed by some Tamiya primer was then done and a trial fit made into a hole drilled into the fuselage revealed that the scoop stood a bit too far out. My belief is that the intake was more or less square in shape:
So a bit of an adjustment was done by cutting some of the plastic card back a bit so that the rod could be inserted further into the hole and it now looks about right:
The scoops will now be removed and properly polished for painting. I will not install these permanently until the final stages after the decals are installed as it will be difficult to get the decals to set properly over the scoops if I glued them in now. The rectangular panel in the above photo will also be filled in as I don't see it in the reference pic. After that, I'll also add a riveted flange for the scoop around the hole in the fuselage to finish off the detail.
Thanks for looking in. Hopefully I can build some momentum on this build again. Next step will be the exhaust vent on the underside.