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First up, cockpit build 

You will need to mix three Tamiya paints to get the color to match - since I eyeballed a lot of the mixing, I don’t have the exact ratios. 

It helps to pre-paint the metallic parts, and the mask them after assembly prior to priming and painting the main fuselage 

Light coat of Mr Surfacer with 50-50 thinner ratio. The panel lines are very fine, and several areas had to be re-scribed after priming. 

I wanted to add some tonal variation to the kit - opting to highlight the panels lines and edges. 

The finished engine exhausts - this didn’t show the light heat staining I applied later on. 

Main coat of paint now being laid back on 

As with many Macross themed kits, there’s a lot of masking to bring out the unique color schemes of their mechas. No, this build was not sponsored by Coca Cola. ? 

Lots and lots of masking… 

Semi-gloss black and Dark German Gray in a 2:1 ratio. 

Amateur mistake - forgot to dry fit before gluing the win in properly. Had to wait for the glue to dry before sanding the area down and rescribing it for the corrective paint job. 

Not good enough, redo. 

Much better…. Not perfect, but as Chris Becker says - Good enough for government work. 

Love the armaments that came with the kit - lots of nice little details. 

Kit complete - ready to dispense righteous justice against the heathen U.N. Forces!

FYI - The U.N. Does become the protagonist organization in the series, but like all governments (and people), they did make some mistakes along the way… 

Notice the Russian-style landing gears - heavily borrowed from the Sukhoi series.