Hi,
Sorry about not posting any updatesfor a while. I have the new landing gear from the second Airfix/MPC kit that I noted above, and am in th process of painting and installing them. In addition I have also started painting that Canopy framing and making some small mods to the aft gun mount.
For the Dive Brakes, I've considered a couple diffrent options, including trying to 3D print something. However, while shopping ast week I noticed that a standard "zip tie" was just about the perfect width in comparison the the brakes shown on the Vengeance mode kit, and the "ridges/ribs" on the zip tie look to be about the right distance apart to reflect the shape of the openings in the Vengenace dive brakes. As such I trimmed up a coupe pieces of zip tie to be the same length as the dive brakes shown on the base Vengeance kit (for each wing) and then cut a slot into the Helcat wing to fit these items, as shown below. I used some scrap plastic into the wing so that the piece of zip tie would fit mostly flush with the wing surfaces, and filled the gaps with some Perfect Plastic Putty. After that I repainted the surfaces as shown in the second image.


I'm hoping to finish up the landing gear, canopy and gun mount soon. After that the main remaining pieces woud be the arresting gear, painting, adding decals and then any weathering or finishing coats etc.
:)