be sealed in to stand a chance.
After many reels of Tamiya tape,
I had the basic airframe complete.
This was finished with Future
floor polish, which seals in the
metal finish nicely and provides
a smooth surface for the decals.
Once the decaling was complete
(using the generic items from the
Zotz set) I finished with Alclad
”soft sheen”, which provides a
subtle finish and which seems to
enhance the lustre of the metal
paints (although it will, of course,dull the high-sheen finishes).
The final stage was the national
and squadron markings, using
the Montex Masks set. I decided
to do these last and used matt
paints to give some contrast
to the sheen of the metal. They
worked very well, but I had to
make sure I sprayed very lightly;
just a light dusting of paint here
is very effective. A heavy layer of
wet paint risks bleeding as well as
ridges when the mask is removed.
Next came a little subtlechipping (although I don’t suppose
a metal surface can be chipped;
scratched maybe...), here and there
with silver, using a very fine brush.
I left the weathering at a minimal
state, feeling that the contrasting
panels seemed to make her look
suitably used and ”in field”.CONCLUSION
All in all, this model was top-
notch and great fun. It builds into
a really substantially large, heavymodel. Put into a Tamiya boxing,
we’d all be singing its praises.
Excellent fit, beautiful metal
undercarriage legs as an option
to the plastic parts (which was a
pleasant surprise), lovely rubber tires
(which I know aren’t to everyone’s
taste but they look great to me),
and very fine surface detail are
big bonuses and make the kit an
absolute pleasure to build.
A minor minus point was that
some more detail could have been
supplied for the interior, but this is18 • AUGUST 2018 • SCALE AVIATION MODELLER INTERNATIONAL
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