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Hi Gents,

For my first entry I'll be doing the famous bird from the Hellenic Air Force's 335 Sqn "Tigris". This a/c appeared at the 2007 Royal International Air Tattoo at Fairford AFB.

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I'll be using the Hobby Boss 1/72 kit. I don't normally do 1/72 as my eyes are not what they used to be but I'll give it a crack! I'll post some progress pics tonight.

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Ok,

1/72 is definitely too small for my weary eyes, so I'm not going super detailed on this. Cockpit will be OOB and basic.

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Painted the exhaust section interior green

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Fitted intake trunk, wheel wells, and exhaust which was painted with Mr Colour Metal Burnt Iron.

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Also applied decals to cockpits

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More to come. Thanks for looking!

Edited by Crazy Snap Captain
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Been busy with the SLUF, so have done a lot in the last few days.

Painted the exhaust in Mr Metal Burnt Iron and installed

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No weapons on this bird, just the gas tanks.

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Married the two halves and closed all panels. Then puttied all gaps.

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Next day I gave it a wash to see which panel lines needed redoing...dirty

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Decal time! I'm trying a new method of decal application where I don't lay a gloss coat but instead smooth my matt finish using ever increasing grits of wet and dry. I must say that this worked very well. The end of future? Maybe not, but handy if you want to save some time on smaller projects. Some of these decals are large and I cut them into more manageable sizes. Here is the wing decal which I cut into 2 pieces

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The side decals proved really tricky so I cut into 4 pieces

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Left side done! LOTS of Mr Softener was used to get the decals to conform around the various lumps and troughs. The decals are inaccurate as well, as they should go all the way to the end of the fuselage (which they don't). Thanks Hobby Boss <_< I mixed some Tamiya yellow and orange to get a match to the decal yellow and touched up some parts where the decals didn't cover or broke up because of too much softener.

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Now for the right hand side. Thanks for stopping by.

Edited by Crazy Snap Captain
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Finished off the decals over teh weekend. Now I need to go and touch up some scratches on the paintwork and the decals. Shouldn't be long now...

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The decals conformed quite well given some of the detail they had to mold around. The refueling probe was the toughest part but got there in the end

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Next up the stand...

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Nice work so far. If I understand correctly you polish the flat paint with wet n dry sandpaper? I have tried this approach before with polishing pads and similar products with grits between 6000-12000 but had always damaged the paintwork, especially if there were some raised details around the surface - would you be so kind and share the secret to your success?

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Hi Sebastian, I start with 6000 grit and then lightly spray any areas where the paint is damaged. Then I moved up grits repeating the process till I hit 12000. Afterwards I used kitchen towel (paper) and that worked awesome. Finally I would just run my finger lightly over any areas where there was raised detail and that seemed to worked well. Guess my fingerprint are 12000 + grit! The key I found after lots of practice was sanding very lightly. HTH.

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