North American RA-5C Vigilante

While I'm not a fan of tactical bombers, Vigilante seemed interesting to me due to its "supersonic" appearance and vivid high-viz camo. The kit from Trumpeter is the most fresh on the market, and not so expensive, so I just bought it together with some other models and put in the stash for several years.

The project ultimately turned into a disaster. First of all, the fit is far from good, especially on flat surfaces of the fuselage. I discovered that I'm not skillful enough to level them properly. The canopy seemed to fit very well during the dry-fitting but failed to install properly after the assembly (the fuselage get warped bit).

Secondly, I tried three different paints for the Light Gull Gray. My previous choice was Hataka but it was spoiled, so I tried Vallejo and got a weird olive tint, than mixed it with other paints and got too dark and blue color. Next, I mixed two AK paints - Light and Dark Gull Gray in 4:1 but achieved unwanted bluish tint. After so many repaints with water-based paints the surface details started to disappear, so I left the color as it is.

As always, I've replaced boxed decals with the aftermarket, and added the wheels from ResKit and tubes from Master.

And here the result. I highlighted the rivets (I know they are far from realistic) to make the model less dull, and I didn't preshade because the prototype looks pretty evenly painted, In my opinion, the model looks quite similar to the original aircraft.