Klear, to which the “COLONIAL”
was applied. On the underside
I applied the XV590 serials as
normal, and brush-painted them
patchily with gloss white.ON FINALS
The main gear legs and doors are
straightforward, although the nose
leg is a bit fiddly since Airfix have
tried to cover the fully-extended
options (take-off and parked) by
modifying the moulding of the
long leg. It works OK if you take
care, but there’s the risk it could
end up bent – I don’t know why
Airfix couldn’t have given us two
complete legs, especially given all
the other extra bits in the kit. The
main legs are missing the scissor
links so I stole some from my spares
box and added a representation of
brake lines with 0.2 mm lead wire.
I’d set out to show the aircraft
under urgent maintenance, so
planned to show the nose folded and
the radar pulled out on its rails. The
set and dish are reasonably detailedand with good references more
could probably be added, although
the AN/AWG-11 doesn’t seem to be
cluttered with extraneous stuff.The pre-painted nose cone, hinge
rings, and radar all fit the front
of the fuselage without fuss.
Last additions are the weapons(probably inconsistent with the
radar maintenance, I realise); the
moulding of these is a bit clunky,
in particular the thick wings of
the Sparrows. I chose to build
up the pylons with the shoulder
adaptors for two Sidewinders (-9L
are supplied) and triple ejector
racks below, to which I added four
Matra rocket packs from the kit.
I raided Hasegawa’s Aircraft
Weapons set X72/9 for two Sparrows
for the front stations, and used
two of the kit’s dummy Sparrow
bodies for the rear mounts. All
these were painted according
to the instructions: white and
grey for the missiles and Alclad
Duralumin, Aluminium, and Jet
Exhaust for the rocket launchers.
The underwing tanks appear
to have been painted in various
schemes. I chose to go with
Xtradecal’s suggestion of overall
EDSG, although white lower halves
were frequently seen. The final
action was to pose the openable
canopies and I was calling my
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