Well, I'm in the home stretch now. I painted the blue stripes and must say I'm happy with the way they turned out. The Fuselage stripe was kind of a pain in the 
to get the angle right when compared to the decal reference sheet, which was further complicated by me trying to make sure the upper and lower angles were centered. Kudos to Tamiya tape...no bleeding. The wing walk boxes continue to haunt me. During fuselage stripe taping, I accidentally caught a piece of the tape on the starboard front strip and it tore a chunk out 
. So I scraped the rest off the front on both sides. I may end up ripping up the rest and painting them in after all. The panel lines were then washed with Windsor Newton acrylics. I'm more partial to water based washes because there is room for error. I just finished the landing gear. I decided to use the kit wheels instead of the TD set. The TD example just seemed a bit small and out of scale to my eye. My method for painting wheels is fairly painless and if you hate doing this, try this technique:
1. Prime the wheels then spray the hub the appropriate color for that plane (silver, black, whatever..)
2. Purchase a dark grey enamel that will simulate real rubber. Make sure it is enamel so it will be compatible with mineral spirits as you will see shortly. I use Floquil Grimy Black which is a nice dark grey.
3. Use a plastic paint palette with the concave dimples (Hobby Lobby sells them cheap) and put some of the aforementioned mineral spirits in one dimple (lack of better terms?) and the black paint in another.
4. Take a fine pointed paint brush of your choice with some spirits and touch the rim on the wheels side. Capillary action will carry the fluid around the rim. You may have to repeat this. Make sure its mineral c, anything stronger, such as lacquer thinner, may eat into the paint on the rim. Ask me how I know this...
5. Then dip it in the black which will then carry around the color in the already present spirits. Again, you may need to doing this a few times to build up the color. You now have a good starting point to bring the paint out to the rest of the tire and if you be patient, the result is a perfect rim. I suppose you could use any enamel, but I Floquil Grimy Black because it goes on nice smooth and there are no brush marks when dry. I usually slightly thin it with the spirits but this is not necessary
6. For weathering, I take some diluted Tamiya Buff, crank down the air pressure to about 5 psi, then spray the treads to simuluate wear, dirt and dust . Some people dry brush this with neutral grey or such, but I prefer this method.
This techinque is easier than it sounds. I want to say I read about a similar technique years ago in FSM where someone was painting tank wheels and I have been using it ever since, of course modified to fit my needs.
There ya have it, use freely and I hope it will help people who loath painting wheels (I happen to dread canopy taping...)
Joe
