These are beautiful kits.
I know what you mean by the rough handling. I bought the Global Hawk (it's freaking huge by the way!) and the Reaper, and the boxes have no structure really and crumple very easily, they don't survive well via postage regardless of what the seller packs around it. Mine arrived crumpled too, but after a quick sprue check it was good to go.
I'll be watching this build as I love seeing these made up, and the approaches everyone takes to make their model a little different. The tubing idea is great, I must remember to do that.