I second the idea of taking an experienced pilot along. Let him/her get a trim flight in so you have one less thing to worry about when you fly it.
If you MUST be the first to fly it (as in, no one else handy to help out) I recommend doing some taxiing first. Get a feel for how it handles during power up. A lot of these warbirds like the power to be added gently, not all at once. Be ready with the rudder to correct your line as the plane will probably tend to turn to the left during power-up.
Now take off when you are comfortable. Do a trim flight to get straight and level with no control input. Check it at various throttle settings, lower throttle will lose altitude of course, but you don't want it to actually pitch up or down drastically when throttled up or down. If it does there is an issue to be resolved before going any further. (engine thrust line, control surface incidence, etc...)
Ok, now you have it flying straight and level. Now it is time to practice landing approaches. This will not land like your trainer. Practice your approaches out in front of you, a couple of mistakes high in altitude. You are not going to actually land yet, just slow down and get a feel for how slow you can go without stalling. (check your timer and make sure you are not about to run out of fuel... I DID mention to run the tank dry on the ground first to see how many minutes it gives you, didn't I?)
Now go around and do your landing approach. During your stall testing you found out how low your throttle can be set without slowing down too much. Let it lose altitude on it's own, don't try to fly it down using down-elevator. As a matter of fact, you should have to keep a tiny bit of "up" on approach, with a nose-up (slightly) attitude. Just before touch-down you can chop the throttle and let her settle in.
To prevent nose-over during taxi, hold full up-elevator. Any time you blip the throttle it will want to "fly" the tail and up-elevator will hold the tail down.
It is a little different than a trike-gear trainer, but really it is just a matter of getting a "feel" for this particular aircraft, in a controlled way.
Good luck and post a flight report!