Moving onto the wings was
much the same as the rest of the kit- the fit is perfect. I did have to open
up the hole in the centre for the ETC
rack and the hole for the Brassin
FuG-16 antenna and mount. I was
going to use a Brassin ETC rack and
drop tank, but I wanted the model
to represent the aircraft after they
landed. All the pictures I could find
did not have the aircraft landing
with the drop tank; the aircraft
took off with one so they must
have dropped it when it ran dry.
A Quickboost set for the
undercarriage bay liners (QB48276)
was used. These look much
better, as they feature the opened
holes in the top of the bay, rather
than showing them as slightly
recessed as in the kit plastic.
The wing-to-fuselage join is the
one place that I wish Eduard haddone better. They have the aft join
cut into a V shape as opposed to
being on a panel line. This requires
careful assembly and minor
amounts of Super Glue to get it
smooth. I then used a beading tool
to restore some of the fasteners that
were lost in the sanding process.
The tail assembly went
together....wait for it....perfectly.
Before I knew it the model
was almost ready for paint.
I now added the canopy
and masked it off with
the Eduard masks;
these also fit the clear
parts perfectly.
I like to add my
landing gear now, to protect
the flaps and so the model has
something to stand on. This
was easy enough to do. I painted
them prior to adding them and
used Bare Metal Foil Chrome for
the exposed part of the oleo
About this time I noticed
something that I had overlooked: I
had the wrong canopy arrangement
on my model! The Rumanian
aircraft had been fitted with an ErlaHaube style canopy, and fortunately
this is supplied in the kit, but
marked as not used. It wasn’t a big
issue, but I did have to break off
my beautiful attached canopy and
clean up and paint the affected
areas. This also required me to add
the additional parts that belong
to this style of canopy. Again not
a big deal, but I really should have
caught that earlier when looking at
my references. The new canopy was
masked off and I was back on track.
The landing gear was masked
with Tamiya tape and the model
wiped down with Testor’s Plastic
Prep to remove any oils left on the
model. Some Tamiya Dark Grey was
sprayed over the canopy area, then
a coat of Alclad Grey Primer was
sprayed over the entire model. This
showed that a little more cleanup
was required, but nothing drastic.PAINTING AND DECALS
It was now time to add some colour
to this model. For me, the painting
process starts by pre-shading
with Tamiya NATO Black on the“THE PAINTING PROCESS STARTS
BY PRE-SHADING WITH TAMIYA
NATO BLACK ON THE PANEL LINES”
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