More on the stickers...
I think I might have caused the issue with them shriveling up in a few seconds of water. I was using warm water, guessing in the 120 degree range, a hot bath if you will. They are definitely the thinnest most problematic stickers I've used, remember I have limited experience for the last 2.5 decades and these new brands are...new.
So using cool, room temperature water helped immensely, even then I had issues with them curling up on themselves, right off the paper onto the model and the corners curled. I spent more time fighting them than I should have, but was tired of this being on the shame-shelf (think I called it a shame-closet recently) this long, and she's one of my century series collection, so time to power through or "ruck on"
Once I had them worked out as best I could all I had to do was put another clear on, I chose a satin instead of flat. Then remove some masks, attach some wheels, glue the canopy in the open position and call her done.
It is a really large aircraft, I think it was the largest single-seat fighter the USAF ever fields, but if that is true it is only by a small margin. Here it is on the top shelf with two other large kits, and it is noticeably larger than the 2-seater F-4B on the same shelf.
