Thanks again for the kind remarks, gentlemen.
Nathan: The decals are Eagle Strike (man, I miss them) #32007. I had to search high and low for it, eventually getting very lucky with ebay. Someone in Japan had it for sale. That set included everything but the stripes and the placards. Cutting edge was where I got the stripes. It may have been easier to paint them on, because I had to figure in the slat sections. I did paint the underneath fuselage section, where pressure relief or bleed? ports are.
Raymond: Give it a shot! As I'm sure you've read, it's just unforgiving with blemishes in the prep. I use micromesh sand paper, fine, or extra fine sanding sticks almost exclusively in prep. Anything fairly coarse can be difficult to bring back down smooth..and it will show scratches. I built the primer (alclad gloss black) in three very coats, resisting to the urge to just cut loose and do it all at once, sanding with 12000 (my favorite grade for alclad) in between coats.
Theuns: Yes, the slats were separate pieces in the kit. However, if you model them deployed, the angle is far too shallow. I had to bend the support tabs to correct this. The overall fit was not too bad, for a 40? year old kit. . I did have to work on some things a bit. It's easy to put the cockpit in at an angle, for example. Probably the biggest fit challenge was "balancing" the gun access panels and air brake pieces to fit, not too far in, and not too far out, There is no "tab" to hold it in the correct spot. The wing - fuselage fit was really good. I did that before I put the fore and aft fuselage sections together. Fuselage half fit was not bad. In short...there's not a lot of putty on her. Oh, and there's a big gob of clay and BB's crammed in the intake (covered up with an included intake cover) to keep the nose down! 
Patrick: Don't tell anyone, but I blew off plans to scribe the panel lines. I've never been any good at that, to be honest. Some lines are molded recessed, however. The protruded rivets were a bit much, so I sanded them down a bit.
Happy modelling, folks.