Model Aircraft – August 2019

panels could then be detail painted by hand.
and The cockpit instruments and the dash panel
was irstly painted black, and then the Tamiya
decal was laid on top of this. The Tamiya seatbelt
decal was also used, and while not as realistic
as aftermarket seat belts, it still presents nicely
for a stright-from-the-box. Next, I painted the
interior green parts of the fuselage, just behind
the pilot’s head. This was done without a mask,
and any overspray was quickly removed. The
fuselage was then assembled to completion.
This joins very well, and did not require any iller,
and just a little sanding of the joins achieved the
result I wanted. The canopy was fully masked
(including the frames - they would be painted
blue later) and itted with Blue-Tac.

I left the nose cowl of from the main part

of the fuselage. This would allow a convenient

point to hold the fuselage while painting

and was no problem to mount to the rest

of the model at the end of the build. I built

and painted the engine and airbrushed all

the internal sides of the cowl section early in

the build. Prior to putting the engine in, the

painted interior of the cowl was masked of so

I could also paint this the same colours at the

same time as the rest of the fuselage. After the

wing assembly, this and the tail elevators were

attached to the fuselage. The gear bays were

irstly primed in black, and then painted with

Vallejo Interior Yellow, building colour up in

layers, thus assisting with the weathering look.

These were then masked-of with pieces of

sponge cut to size. Then, after a quick clean of

the model with Isopropyl Alcohol, the painting

could begin.

The irst step was to apply a gloss black layer

over the entire model. This was done with

Tamiya Gloss Black X-1, thinned with Tamiya

acrylic thinner. The paint was applied very

thinly and built up in multiple layers for

a nice shiny inish. As tempting as it was

to leave this awesome machine in gloss

black, I next pressed on with the D-Day

stripes, since the gloss black was already

done it made sense to me to do it this

way. These were not included in the

colour instructions from Eagle Strike,

THIS AIRCRAFT BELONGED TO THE 405TH FIGHTER GROUP,

510TH FIGHTER SQUADRON, FLYING INITIALLY FROM

CHRISTCHURCH, ENGLAND

MODEL AIRCRAFT AUGUST 2019

GEORGIA PEACH

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