Based on your input, I did decide to go ahead with the hydraulics.
Today's output was a mixed bag. I got the upper center wing skins fitted out and joined to the lower skin. Got the lower skin bottom all fitted out with a couple of hiccups. Then I decided, fatefully, to start working on piping all the wheel well hydraulics. And just at the end of the day, when putting too much stress on the wing trying to get the last stubborn brass fitting on the gear door valve, I broke off the folded wing spar. And this is not going to be an easy fix.
So let's begin at the beginning.
On the bottom of the upper wing skin there are three parts on each side: the intercooler face at the wing root, the ceiling of the forward wheel well and the reverse curved fairing that contains the flaps. You have to constantly pay attention to whether you're building a "flaps up" or "Flaps down" version since there are different fairing parts in the flap area. I'm building "flaps down".
Here's a CU of the intercooler. and the duct leading to the carburetor.
The intercooler was supposed to be Tamiya Metallic Gray so I mixed up some Life Color dark sea gray and Tamiya chrome silver. And of course, none of this is even remotely visible in the finished model.
The top wing was joined to the bottom and, of course, it fit like a glove.
The leading edge fairings for the cooler inlets went on nicely and the innards look pretty good. If you were able to peer through the louvers, which you can't really do very well, you would be able to see the intercooler facing. But I know it's there.
On the wing bottom there were several little bits and pieces. In the center is a vented hatch which is purposefully held in a slightly open position. Next to it are two reward facing hooks, the purpose of which I have no idea, possibly catapult use... I got one glued in and the other when manipulating it took off and supposedly disappeared. I thought about scratch-building another, but it was a bit delicate and didn't look too promising. So I got the next tiny part, the fairings that will over so actuator or another. I got one glued in and was gluing the other side in, and noticed the first piece, which I thought had set enough, had disappeared. And it was really gone. This piece was a little more straight forward so I did scratch-build another out of a piece of sprue.
Then I found the missing hook. I put it on and added the outlet fairings from the oil cooler housing. Lastly, there was a triangular brace in the opening where a bottom window is placed which I glued in and then glued in the bottom window. The kit has masks, although they are not die cut and you have to cut them yourself. They're made from the material that Tamiya uses for their wonderful masking tape and it's slightly deformable. All of this gets painted Insignia White.
The above also shows more fairings for the "Down-position" for the flaps.
This brings me to the wheel well piping. I found that one of my Albion fine brass tubes is has the right O.D. for my finest gauge of solder. And this same tube kind of fits onto the nubs representing pipe fittings on the valve, except for the top position. I had to cut this off so the tubing will fit on the narrower stem.
I got 11 out of 12 fitting in place and was fussing with the last one. It was one that would go over the top stub which was just a bit oversized and I was pushing a bit too hard and didn't realize what else I was putting pressure on. It was the folded outer wing spar. And this is a bad place for a break. There's very little surface area for gluing, and similarly, there's not much material to drill and pin. My first attempt to pin the hydraulic actuating arm and got it pinned, but then it broke below the metal reinforcement. I then drilled the main part for a pin, but it's a bit misaligned.
This is getting messy and I'm contemplating what it would take to rebuild the joint entirely in brass. There's also another possibility which is to have one wing up and one wing down. That's not a terrible thought and I have entertained it before. If I don't make the entire thing out of brass, I could make that actuating arm out of brass and marry it to the plastic parts. All of the lugs and fitting could be brass since I've been doing stuff like this fairly recently. In fact, if done correctly, you could almost make the wing fold functional. Stay tuned...