Thanks Wayne.
A little more progress to report. To start on the landing gear, I wanted to first be sure that I flatten the tires. This is because Tamiya's detail locks the wheels in position once glued so one needs to be sure the flat spot is in the right place. To do this, I dry-fitted the wheels to the struts and the struts into the wings along with the tail wheel and set the model down. I must say there was still a little slop in the joints which may come in handy to tweak things on final assembly. Once standing on the gear. I put a blob of black paint on a piece of paper , lifted one wheel slightly, slid the paper in place and then lowered the wheel into the blob of paint. This was repeated on the other side and then the model was turned over to get the below shot. As you can see, the black paint marks the location for the flat spot which can now be filed down.
With that set aside to dry, I decided to tackle the rather intriguing radiator splitter vanes. Eight parts make up this assembly:
Assembly is a little fiddly but, once glued, everything locks into place nicely, revealing the complex curvatures of the vanes. Yes there are some ejector pin marks seen in these brutal closeups but I didn't want to thin these parts and they won't be seen once this all goes into the tub - I hope.
This is what it looks like when placed into the tub. Nice fit, as expected.
I'll need to paint this part silver before fitting it and then the bottom section of the tub will be installed. Unfortunately Tamiya molded this part with the exit flap shut and I'll probably cut that out and create one that has the flap open. I think that would be a more realistic position for an aircraft parked on the ground.
That's it for today. Once again thanks for following along and for your helpful inputs.