Great project, my friend @jimh!
You surely have some serious work ahead, due to the absolutely limited run nature of the kit, but your excellent skills will produce a most rewarding result of a model rarely seen.
Looking forward to it!

More of the bondo buggy. I appreciate the confidence in the build! I'm on a mission to make this really presentable. Thankfully I bought a new tube of Tamiya putty and some padded sandpaper 🙂 The wing joint splits the flaps on the underside of the wing. After watching the judges pull out the mirrors in Columbus I caked on the filler here. The rest was fit as best I could make it before adding the filler. I've since sanded out all the filler and re-scribed most of the panel lines. some will be lost but not that noticeable. The canopy is next up on the project. It doesn't fit that well so once it's glued on I'll make some shims and fill as required. It's coming, slow but sure.

8 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Lots of work, progressing nicely, Jim @jimh