Made some good, if somewhat slow and fiddly progress, with the oil cooler vents thinned down and attached, the cockpit installed along with supporting strips mentioned previously, and the fuselage joined.
There was a very slight mismatch with the fuselage top and bottom joints, as one side seemed slightly thicker along its edge than the other, perhaps due to slight warping. However, this has now been remedied (I hope !) and the joints sanded and polished.
The kit includes the fin fillet, marked as a "Part not for use", this being a "D" variant, and I presume this was a common sprue for the Hasegawa "N" version. Good news for me though, as the subject aircraft had the fillet retro-fitted.
Believe it or not, these two small parts took almost an hour to sort out and join, as there were annoying sprue attachment burrs on each side, which were
very difficult to remove, due to their location, and the delicate nature of the parts. But the fillet was eventually coaxed into place and set with Tamiya extra thin cement, and just needs to have the lower joints filled with PVA once set.
Next step is to measure, mark out and make the compressibility flaps mentioned earlier, shown in the extract from the drawings in Bert Kinsey's "P-47 in Detail".
Back sometime tomorrow with a further up-date, if things go to plan.