I've been afforded the luxury of an entire day at the bench. Helps that I have a satellite-connected TV in my work shop to be able to watch the entire slew of college football games. Anyway, I've made major progress. I have the entire airframe assembled along with all of the after-market updates. I think the kit has been largely typical Tamiya quality, with a couple of exceptions - the gun fairing piece did not sit flush at the forward point and I had to squeeze it while the liquid cement set, and neither of the engines wanted to attach properly without a lot of pressure from clamps. I should not have attached the gun sight until later, and the forward landing gear is a bit fragile as well.
The CMK set is another issue. The slats were incredibly fragile. I mis-cut both of the slats that are on the wings' outer edges but I think I was able to rescue them from the trash pile. There were pieces that the instructions indicated to install inside the wings before attaching the flaps but the instructions were not clear and I couldn't figure out how these pieces were supposed to attach. And I dang near cut off the tip of my thumb when my XActo slipped while removing one of these pieces from its molding mount.
I have photos but the wife is using my laptop at the moment, so I'll wait to post until I can get the laptop back. (My old desktop has been incredibly unreliable lately).