Cool,
Thanks for the hints. I cleaned up the main pieces for the X-24B part of the kit last night. In doing so I noticed a couple other small issues, though noting too major.
1st, for the fwd landing gear bay, there is a very small hole in one side as shown below. Unfortunately I was using my phone as a camera, and may have shaked it a little, so the picture is a little fuzzy but I think you can make it out at the top end.
(The black piece of plastic in the image is just a scrap piece of something that I used to prop the wheel well up with)
Next, one of the back wheel wells appears to have been a little miscast. I the picture below, you can see that the one on the left has a relatively thin bottom (maybe a mm or two) and sides that extend up 3 or 4 mm at the top edge, tapering to a bit less at the front edge. Unfortunately it looks like there may have been an issue with the molds for the center piece, with the bottom coming out extra thick, and the sides coming out much shorter. In addition, you can kind of make out how the bottom is kind of lumpy right around where the hole is for the landing gear strut.
In addition, in the image above you can also see where I hve cut away the bottom of the cockpit. I fugure this way I can just replace the bottom part with some sheet styrene, rather than try and sand out the ejector pin marke that had been there.
Anyway, for the misshappen aft wheel well, what I have done for now is, I've trimmed the floor down a bit and removed the side extensions, as shown below. I'm going to continue to try and sand the bit near the hole for the landing gear strut a bit more, and re-add any of the raised "ribs" on the bottom that may end up getting sanded off. It looks like a small strip of styrene should work OK there. Then I will try and build up the sides of the well, with strip styrene using the other well as a template for getting the heights right.
(side view after having trimmed the bottom and sides)
Other than that I spent some time searching the internet for images to help with the build and with painting. Fortunately there are many images f this craft in the NASA archives, as well as a couple good sets of walk around photos of it at a museum. Since those photos may e copyrighted I'll just post the links to those sites (so that you can visit the owner's site) instead of trying to pot links to any of the images directly.
http://www.primeportal.net/hangar/howard_mason3/x-24b/
http://aircraftwalkaround.hobbyvista.com/x24/x24.htm
One of the interesting things that I have found about this craft is that it had a handful of different paint schemes over its life, which may help me (and my shakey hands out a bit).
Specifically, as it sits right now in a museum (as shown in the links above) it appears to be painted mostly white with a black anti-glare panel, and medium blue leading edges for the body, with a thin gold pin strip. I was concerned that that pin strip might be a bit beyond my abilities right now (since it would be fairly small at 1/72 scale), but fortunately I have also seen other images of the craft earlier in its career either with just a blue leading adge and no pinstripe, or a black leading edge with no pinstripe, either of which will hopefully be a bit easier for me to paint. In addition there are also some images of the craft with a mostly natural metal body bit some white surfaces (such as the tail empennages, etc) aft. I think I am leaning towards a mostly white body and the black leading edges because (I think) that looks to be similar to how the craft looked in some of the more common images of it flying of the Muroc Dry Lake Bed.
Other than that, some of the walk arounds also show good detail of the aft bulkhead on the craft, where the main engines attach, which appears to be almost a dark olive with a hint of yellow (though it is possible that dirt on the surfaces may make it looks a bit yellowish as the adjacent white surfaces also look like they may have a bit of a yellowish tint too).
Additionally, its also interesting to see that the engine nozzles actually appear to be almost a chartreuse/green shaded zinc chromate in color, while the wheel wells appear to be mostly a natural metal color, though parts of the forward wheel strut (or whatever the correct term is) actually looks to be a dirty white color, while parts of the aft struts appear to be a dull metallic color. Interestingly, also the hinges on the wheel well doors appear to have a bit of a greenish tinge to their metallic color as well.
For the cockpit, the seat appears to be mostly a simple red color with light grey belts. Parts of the sides and and back of the cockpit appears to be covered with a light green quilted surface that may be some sort of insulation or fire blanket, while the rest of the surfaces appear to be a light gray, with some black instrument panels.
Since I have the time and some good images to go by I may try and dress up the cockpit a bit in my build. For the "quilted" surface I'm not fully sure what to do yet, but I may try making a quilted image in MS Paint and printing that to some laser printer self-adhesive paper that I bought and see how that works out.
I'm looking forward to starting on the cockpit soon, and I figure during any down time I have while doing that, I can also start into either the wheel wells or cleaning up the tail empennages. 