I just realized that I have made a bit of progress, but have not written about the steps here. In the last few days, I have:
1. Attached the fin and rudder.
2. Attached the tailwheel mount. I had to make a new mount as my fuselage was shaped a bit different where the mount attaches. The picture of the mount on the plans was a little difficult to udnerstand.
3. I cut the struts to the correct length, shaped them, and then used a miter saw to notch the ends. The notch was not quite wide enough for the brass shims so I used a cut-off wheel on my Dremel to widen them. I glued the shims in place and drilled a hole through the ends.
I need to attach the struts to the wings and the wings to the fuselage in order to continue on to the next step of strut assembly. I have run into 2 problems. First, I am having trouble locating the strut attachments points in the wing because the covering is hiding them. I will try to shine a bright flashlight through the wing to see if that helps. Second, I have found that the holes in the fuselage that are supposed to receive the bolts to hold down the wings are too small to accommodate the bolts!
