Complete

starting to look like an aircraft. lots of filling and sanding ahoy.

kit has fixed flaps so i had to cut out them. they are mostly drooped when on the ground and no engine to power up the hydraulics. 

progress is extremely slow due to the kit, unusual for trumpeter's aircraft tbh.

anyway spot checking with primer for seams etc, used regular CA and gunze 500 surfacer where needed.

next step is more sanding, scribing and polishing then to primer, hopefully. 

gunze 500 grey primer on > wax on wax off with the help of über hi-tech shish-nailpolishers. 

marked all of the prominent panel lines with 0.5 2b lead mechanical pencil, then mapped with gunze h311 for the dirty areas iaw ref shots as much as i could.

next is the fun! stuff, white. we all know white's gonna white and won't play ball so stay tuned for what might be an epic disaster! :] 

started painting with gunze c381 insignia white. this is after 2 passes. i am thinking of doing 1 more pass with the nose section and leave the rest for the wingroots and the engine section usually has a lot of grime, dirt streaks and whatnot anyway - a bit of contrast would come in handy.

now the question is what color to paint the bays for mlg and boards. speedbrakes look like they are lt. ghost grayish however no idea about the gear wells. i'll probably go for a not so screaming metallic gray in the mlg bay. 

mother nature @ 7something richter scale. 

damage to the rt side is fixed. 

as far as i am concerned the paintjob is done. this build took a lot longer than i'd anticipated and honestly i'm starting to lose my mojo.

hoping to put this one past asap and go onto the greener pastures that is the 109 group build. 

some panellines lost and dinks in the paint here and there but like i've said, i'm calling the paint over. 

the aftermarket decals that i'll be using.

eventho the colors and register are all good and well, you are looking at an entire carrier film here. the modeller has to trim it all and this usually causes issues with the decals curling onto themselves during drying no matter how fresh a blade is used, usually requiring several coats of gloss varnish afterwards for sanding.

we'll see how it goes... 

decals are on. 

carrier film was thick enough to be noticed under light no matter how much softener is used. at least they didn't curled on, tho it might be early still.

i'll give em a day to settle then onto multiple layers of gloss coat for sanding and levelling them. this project keeps lingering on... :/ 

after 2 coats of tamiya clear and 1 coat of future decals are sanded down with wet 800 and nailpolishers afterwards, awaiting a final flat coat now. installed lgs and speedbreaks while i'm at it. 

warts n all i'm calling her done.

c'ya at the 109gb, thanks for watching. 😎