Scale aviation modeller international

housings at this point as these

will impede painting and decaling

later. Provided you took care in

the preparation, attaching the

wings and intakes is easy enough

with only a small amount of filler

required at the joints. I left the

tailplanes off until later as they

mount with a small spigot which

makes them very susceptible

to damage during the build.

Leaving them off will also make

the decaling stage a lot easier.

Once I was happy with all the

joins I attached and masked the

canopy as this would also act as a

mask for the cockpit. I omitted the

undercarriage legs and exhausts

until the end of the build, again to

make painting and decaling stages

easier, as well as reducing the risk

of damage to the undercarriage

legs. I also left off all the little

aerials to the end for same reason.

PAINTING

First I carefully airbrushed black

on the outside of the canopy to

give the correct inside colour.

Once that was dry, a light coat

of silver reduced the tone before

the model was sprayed overall

with Halfords white primer. Once

that was fully dry, there was a

lot of masking needed to avoid

any risk of overspray from the

application of the blue colour

which was the next step. The

instructions indicated a mix of

Mr Color acrylics, specifically

80% of 322 (Phthalocyanine Blue)

and 20% of 323 (Light Blue). This

required several light coats to get

a uniform density and it was only

when I came to apply the decals I

found that the mix was a little too

dark. You might want to play with

the ratio to get something more

akin to the decal colour. Previous

experience with the Hasegawa

24 • OCTOBER 2018 • SCALE AVIATION MODELLER INTERNATIONAL

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