I haven’t felt this sensation in
years, until I worked on this kit,
and saw visions of Tamiya tape!)
For the overall base coat, I
painted the entire model XF-77 IJN
Grey, and then lightly misted on
XF-52 Neutral Grey, blending the
two colours together. I know that
F-35s are fairly new aircraft, and
well maintained, so any weathering
was going to be minimal.
After all the paint had dried,
I eagerly began removing the
masking. This was a very rewarding
process, as very little to no paint
had bled through. It took me over
an hour and a half to remove it all
and upon completion, I was really
pleased with how well the colours
balanced out. (I have posted a little
video showing the unmasking of
this kit here https://w w w.youtube.
com/watch?v=mXd0e6vQeno)
I now glossed the model using
Tamiya X-22 Clear and I was
finally ready to add the decals.DECALS
The decals are printed by Cartograf,
and looked perfect, but the sheet
itself and decal/painting guide is
where I have a few issues. The decal
sheet is very small; I’m guessing
this is to help save on the cost of
mass printing, but it means that the
decals are really close to each other.
To add to the confusion, theindication numbers were at times
quite a distance away from the decal
they were meant to represent. In
a few instances, I would need four
decals but I could only find three- the last one would be hiding on
the other side of an insignia decal.
This was confusing enough,
but the decal guild is also quite
small, and not printed as clearly
as the decals. So there were
times when I didn’t really know
how the decal was supposed to
be placed, because the stencil
was too small on the guide.
Another oddity is that the
decal sheet provides the names
of two pilots for what I assume
are each option. However, these
decals don’t go anywhere on the24 • NOVEMBER 2018 • SCALE AVIATION MODELLER INTERNATIONAL
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