I am a bit surprised by the poor fitting of this Airfix kit, George!
My experiences with particularly the newer Airfix are quite positive, so apparently they’ve missed the boat with this one.
You’ve mastered the difficulties in a great way however.

The plan for today was to get everything ready for painting. I cut all of parts to be added off the sprue and cleaned them up. I determined which set of drop tanks I needed and assembled them.

Getting the fuselage ready was a little more work. The first thing I needed to do is the thing I hate the worst: re-establishing the panel lines that have been lost. I hate this task because I am not very good at it, and I usually end up giving myself more work because the tool jumps off-track and creates a new line that I have to fill. This plane was even more difficult because the panel lines are very wide. There wasn't really a good way to match the width of the existing line, so I just did the best I could and hopefully the mismatched widths won't be too noticeable. I got all the lines done that I planned to do, and then repaired all of the inadvertent lines that I added. Finally I polished all of the plane's surface with an old t-shirt. I gave the plane one last check, and, of course, discovered a phantom seam on top of the fuselage. I added more filler to the seam, let it dry, and then sanded and polished it. I think it is ready to go.

5 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Excellent progress, my friend @gblair! Great that restored the lost panel lines. And, of course, that phantom seam 🙂
Pity for the short shot door, looks like new Airfix kits exhibit such issues more frequently than others.

Nice progress, George!
Two things I hate most about our hobby are sanding and restoring panel lines.

I have those scribers from UMM as well George (@gblair) and I've found them to be more trouble to control than using one of those flat two sided razor saws for most scribing, especially over curved surfaces.The biggest drawback to the razor saw is getting into a tight corner and I can usually get around this either with the UMM scriber or a scribing needed chucked up in a pin vise. I agree that sometimes pushing works better. In all cases, I've found that it takes a lot of concentration to keep the touch lite, especially in the initial scribes. Having the scribing slip is par for the course, unfortunately, and having the plastic being too soft doesn't help matters. This is one of the reasons I rescribe and repair as I go with seam work rather than wait until I am finished with the entire model. The other is because I find my patience wearing thin if I have to do this for too long and I have to avoid the urge to rush a job to get it finished. Can't say I am always successful in that last bit! 🙂

I am trying to get everything ready to paint tomorrow. I got the glass ready using Eduard masks, which fit perfectly. The Airfix glass is very nice, by the way. These drones had several items that I need to add. In the cockpit, the gunsight was removed and replaced with a control panel that sits on top of the glare shield. I created the box and switches using Tinkercad and printed it in my 3D resin printer, along with the small wingtip pods that were carried on many of these planes. I also added a small tube that sticks out from the top of the engine intake on the front of the fuselage. This is the camera lens that transmits the view ahead to the pilot who is controlling the plane from the ground. I was a little irritated that there is no glare shield provided in this model. Most actual airplanes have a glare shield over the instrument panel, but many models do not provide one. I added one using thin plastic, then filled the open area behind the panel with acrylic putty. Finally, I checked the size of my homemade control panel, and called it a day.

4 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Fantastic add-ons, my friend @gblair! Absolutely wonderful!

NMF last on sounds also less risky, since you will not have to mask it, my friend @gblair