Model Aircraft – August 2019

were painted and detailed separately.

The rest of the build didn’t present many

problems, even if the it of the lower areas

were not the best, in fact some parts needed

lots of putty to be perfect! The intakes and

the wheel wells were painted with Gunze H1

White, and a black pin-wash was applied to

enhance the details. Once dry I masked of

these areas ready for painting. I like to to start

the weathering process when I start painting,

so here we go! Since this was a monochromatic

paint scheme I used white and black to create

some weathering efects and dirt. However, as

this was a CAG bird, all the pictures I could see

of this aircraft showed it to be nearly pristine, so

I needed to restrain the amount of weathering

I used. So, I started with the lighter colour, on

fuselage sides and undersides using Gunze

H308 Gray FS36375. This was applied over some

pre-shading using black on the panel lines and

white on the interior of the panel lines and

raised areas such as would be more exposed to

maintenance. I then applied another coat of the

base colour. Doing this is perhaps the easiest

was to achieve some tonal diferences without

too much work! The following coats need to be

very thin to once more control the look once

dry. To represent some speciic grime I applied

Dark Earth in the area behind the wheels wells,

giving them their usual dirty look! The same

Some iller was needed around the edges......

...and blends easily

....and along the front coaming, and Perfect Plastic Putty does the job...

The excellent Aires

cockpit set ready for

painting

Filler was also needed

on the undersides

(^36) BLACK KNIGHTS SUPER HORNET WWW.MODELAIRCRAFTMAG.COM
I WANTED TO SHOW MY SUPER HORNET WITH THE CANOPY
OPEN, SO I DECIDED TO USE THE AMAZING AIRES F/A-18F
COCKPIT SET