34 MODEL AIRPLANE INTERNATIONAL - August 2019KIT BUILD
barely enough!
The wings are straightforward, comprising
upper and lower halves, with separate clear
tips to facilitate showing the navigation
lights. I actually did nothing about these
initially, gluing them on as they were, then
had a pang of conscience and ended up
drilling at an angle into the interface between
clear tip and wing and fi lling the hole with
green or red paint before sealing it up with
superglue. The clear tip fairings need to be
masked before blending the tip into the wing.
The wings fi t reasonably to the fuselage, but
if fi ller is needed, care needs to be taken not
to obliterate the rivet detail on the reinforcing
strip at the root itself, in this case, a
water soluble fi ller is helpful. At the
leading edge, there are separate
pieces for the intakes, (in
order to accommodate other
variants like the SNCASE
Mistral) which need some
refi nement of their internal
surfaces with small fi les
and a sharp blade.
The tailbooms are
made up of two halves,
and careful gluing means
there's very little joint clean
up needed, the booms and
horizontal stabiliser are best fi tted
together to make sure the alignment is
right, and when the whole lot is properly set,
the boom to wing fairing joints need a little
fi ller to tidy them up.
Despite the work on the interior, I decided
to show the model with the canopy closed
up, the kit parts fi tting pretty well with
only a tiny smear of fi ller around the fi xed
windscreen; I had available a set of masks
from PeeWit which are very good value and
are easy to use.Painting
After the usual priming with Halfords grey
from a rattle can and polishing the fi nal
surface, the wings and tailbooms were given
a fl ash coat of Halfords White primer to act
as a base for the yellow bands, applied
using Tamiya X-8. With the yellow masked,
the overall Olive Drab was applied using
Tamiya XF-62, initially in a uniform coat on
both upper and lower surfaces. This initial
coat was followed on the upper surfaces by
successive thin coats of XF-62 lightened
with increasing amounts of X-8 yellow, up
to about 25%, and applying the lightened
paint in increasingly concentrated areas at
the centre of the airframe panels, the lower
surfaces were left in the original OD fi nish.
Typically, after I'd put the effort into the main
paintwork I realised that I needed to paint
the maroon fi n sections seen on Mexican
aircraft of the era, so needed to do some
more masking, white priming (this time with
Vallejo one-shot primer) and a maroon-like
colour made up from Tamiya X-7 red and
XF-64 brown. I'd already glossed the main
airframe with Mr. Hobby GX 113 lacquer,The Mexican
Air Force
aircraft I was
modelling had
yellow wing
bands and
tanks, here
the yellow has
been sprayed
over a white
primer, and
masked.The overall
Olive Drab
colour was
applied
in layers,
lightening
each
successive
one with
yellow.Glossed and
masked for
the maroon
paint on the
fi ns, - it would
have been a
better idea
to have done
this fi rst!EL VAMPIRO.indd 34 08/07/2019 15:20