Thanks Karl and, yes, it does help once all glued together but without any sort of locating pins it is all pretty fiddley and potentially a fling-the-f!cking-thing-at-the-wall exercise for anyone who lacks patience. Fortunately, I do have plenty of that.
Anyway I managed to get everything in place and walked away to regather my sanity. The work started by drill and gluing brass pins into the ends of the struts:
Unfortunately for those of you who relish some
schadenfreude, I didn't stop to take pics of the remaining steps as there was too much fussing around but, as you might expect, corresponding holes were drilled into the wing bulkhead and then the ends of the struts were inserted into those holes with some CA gel glue, which allows for a bit of time to make adjustments before it sets up. This is necessary because neither the struts nor the bulkhead are set accurately to allow the u/c to hang straight up and down so there is a need to slide one of the pins in or out so get the right vertical alignment. And while all that is going on, the brace behind the struts had to be positioned, also with CA gel glue applied, to bring the u/c into alignment with the proper forward rake. Eventually all worked out fairly well, though things could have been MUCH worse. Here's a close-up of the detail at the top of the struts which are now in place with copious amounts of CA to secure them.
A view from the side showing the rear brace installed.
And here she is standing up, rock solid. The wheels were rotated to bring the flat spots into place and then some TET was applied to fix them there. Touch ups are needed.
Here's a view from the front showing the slight dihedral and the vertical (more or less) struts. If one relied solely on placement of the kit parts as is there would be a strong likelihood of the undercarriage splaying outward.
The wheel installation was the last thing worrying me and it's now on to gloss coating, decals (oh yeah, these might disintegrate yet - one more worry), weathering, and addition of pointy things.
Thanks for following along guys.