At the end of Part 9, we had the basic paint job done, and were ready for some painted-on markings and decals. Let’s get that done, and get this build over the line!

Since I had planned to paint the fuselage codes and serial numbers, but use decals for the national insignia, the first task was to get a nice gloss coat down in preparation. I appreciated that the whole gloss before decals thing is a contentious one on the modelling Internet these days, but I like to do it anyway as a bit of a security blanket. And the Model Master Olive Drab enamel paint I used had an especially flat and chalky finish.

The national markings are from a Fantasy Printshop set, but were a little bit brittle, so I experienced a bit of cracking here and there. The red demarcations on the flaps were masked and painted. You’ll note that I also painted the base of the antenna on the tail silver.

Next up, the fuselage codes were masked using the set I created and cut earlier using the Silhouette Portrait, and airbrushed with SMS White:

The aircraft name and a handful of stencil decals came from the kit sheet. They weren’t in great shape, so I kept their usage to an absolute minimum. There’s a bit of silvering and some wrinkling to deal with, but nothing a bit more decal solvent didn’t sort out.

The serial numbers were masked and sprayed next, along with fitting the landing gear and prop. A flat coat chased most of the silvering away:

At this point I thought I had an easy ride to the finish line, but guess which dope forgot to remove the interior windscreen masks prior to gluing it into place on the fuselage… I made a right mess getting them out, and managed to knock the gun sight glass off in the process. No way of getting it back in, but at least I managed to remove most of the adhesive residue from inside the windscreen, and hide most of the scratches I made.

One last thing to address before I could call it done: the sliding portion of the canopy. It didn’t really fit properly in the closed position, so I’d have to pose it open (which was the plan all along). But it doesn’t sit properly when slid back, either! As the fuselage narrows towards the read of the cockpit, the front of the canopy obviously doesn’t pinch in to accommodate this, and so just drapes down over the fuselage. So I added a pair of short lengths of styrene strip to act as supports for the front of the sliding canopy:

These did the job admirably:

I painted them Interior Green to get them to blend in as much as possible, and they don’t really stand out on the finished model. You’ll note that I also added a rear-view mirror to the top of the windscreen, which I borrowed from the Tamiya kit, after determining the correct style.

After fitting the final fiddly bits, it was finally done!

Thanks to everybody for following along, and I hope the result meets with your approval. If you’d like to read a much more in-depth account of the process, check out my build thread over on the Large Scale Planes forums.

Until the next one!

When we left off at the end of Part 8, we were just about to embark on the painting stage, after getting a solid coat of primer down (Mr. Finishing Surfacer 1500 Black). I decided to start with the wheel bays:

Now I appreciate that Mustang wheel bays weren’t really interior green, but out of expedience, this one will be. I’m also going to fit the inner clamshell doors in the closed position to help hide as much of them as possible, since they’re totally inaccurate anyway.

I also decided that I would try painting the national insignia first, using the Montex mask set I had purchased. The reasoning here is that this would make it easier to hide the white fringing that you often see with painted markings that are laid over a white base layer. This didn’t go well however, as I discovered I’d put the upper wing insignia on the wrong side:

Luckily I had made backup versions of the insignia masks using my Silhouette Portrait cutter. But even after correcting this rookie error, I was far from satisfied with the results, and repeated attempts gave me issues that ranged from distorted insignia to paint lifting, and even one that turned out to be well oversized! In the end, I reluctantly decided to resort to decals for the national insignia, but paint the codes and serials.

Skipping all the grievous updates that show my stupid mistakes, I finally arrived at a successful application of Mr. Hobby H-53 Neutral Grey on the undersides:

This was followed by Olive Drab from an ancient bottle of Model Master enamel paint I had in the stash (the only example of such a colour I had):

In each case I applied the paint with a mottling technique, designed to give a subtly variegated effect. I think I went a little too far with it, and the end result is a little too uniform, but it’s effective enough.

It was at this point that I took another long break from the build, and it found itself back on the Shelf of Doom. By the time I returned to it in early 2024, I was on a mission to just get it done, so things accelerated rapidly, and it was all over pretty quickly. But we’ll deal with that in the next update! It’ll be a longer one, but we’ll bring this thing home in the process.

Stay tuned!

It’s been a long time since I published Part 7 of this build log, with the model once again finding itself back on the Shelf of Doom—even if only temporarily. It was, eventually, returned to the workbench and finished off earlier this year (2024), so I’ll endeavour to catch you all up in as few posts as possible!

The build had now evolved to the point where I felt it was safe to put a coat of primer down, and in this case it was Mr. Finishing Surfacer 1500 Black, thinned from the jar and applied with an airbrush:

I also added some token canopy rails from Evergreen styrene strip—partly to help hide the joint problems in that area, and partly because it’s very plain, and will be highly visible with the canopy slid back:

The other thing I decided to do is something I should have tackled way earlier in the build, and probably prior to assembling the fuselage: represent the AN/APS-13 tail warning radar antenna on the fin. I figured this wouldn’t be much of a problem…until I tried to do it! My initial idea was to simply drill holes on each side at the appropriate locations, and insert suitably sized wires to do the job. I’ll spare you the gory details, but after a long series of ham-fisted mishaps, this approach proved to be an abject failure, and mostly due to poor planning and execution on my part. Suffice to say I broke a good half-dozen micro drill bits in the attempt. 

And then I had a bright idea! (Anybody worried, yet?) The Tamiya kit has this antenna array as a single piece of photo-etched stainless steel, so I thought I might be able to use it here on this build, and save me some pain. So I set about joining up my ill-fated holes to form a pair of slots, into which I could insert the Tamiya photo-etched part:

I secured it initially with a liberal dose of Mr. Cement S, which melted the plastic to the tiny PE and grabbed it nicely. I then flooded the area with some thin CA. The next step was to pack out the nasty gouges on each side with some Milliput:

It took a bit of effort to clean the area up and smooth it out, but at least this important detail was taken care of. And of course, I put the antenna in backwards!

After another application of primer, it at least looked passable:

Like much of what I do at the workbench, my attempt to use primer to build up the mounting plate for the fin antenna didn’t quite go to plan:

At least the other side was better:

The sliding hood was masked off inside and out using the Montex masks. These required some additional help in the form of liquid masking fluid—in this case, Mr. Masking Sol Neo. I’m not a huge fan of the stuff, but at least it’s easy to get off.

If I had any doubts about having the canopy open on this one, a proper test fit with the token slide rails in place shows that the sliding hood wasn’t tall enough to meet the canopy anyway:

This brings us up the painting stage, which we’ll take a look at in Part 9. Stay tuned!