Hasegawa and Hobby Boss F/A-18's + a Kinetic one!

[Thadeus]

I couldn't add pics to my previous post. Apparently my lack of modelling skills broke the server or something. I'll try to split it in two.

So, part one:

 

I managed to get the basic colours down. I kind of forgot how much time does it take to paint an 1/48 model. The white spots did show through the paint a lot, so I had to add more of the basic colour. This probably obliterated the 16440/Gunze H315 preshade. Next time I'll probably reverse the order, first the hard spots, then the soft marbling. On its own I really liked how the Gunze H308 came out.

 

I know this jet looked quite clean, but I just couldn't help myself. I forgot all about the two little pips I made for the safety pins. 

 

 

A lot of people show their airbrush set up, so here's mine. The Kinetic spray booth. Comes free with any of their models. Nice! I have a few other brands too. They are more or less the same quality. The Hobby Boss ones come with a very nice stand on the sides where You can put some parts sticked on a toothpick.

I really like that slow build up of the paint. I'll have to make one jet extremelly dirty.

 

 

 

 

 

While I was quite happy with just the H308 I'm not too happy with the colour change from H308 to H307. I feel they are both blueish grays, but the top colour seems to have a tiny bit purplish sheen to it, while the lower one has a bit of a green colour. It also seems a bit the light ghost gray is a bit darker than dark ghost gray. I admit, it all might come down to all the paint layers beneath the colour.

Flash on

 

 

end o pt.1

[Thadeus]

Part two:

With my obsession of colour I tried to compare the current colour to my previous models. Here is with the one I'm most happy with, the Hobby Boss F/A-18C. The Kinetic part is the light ghost gray, while the HB model was painted with the dark ghost gray from Pactra.

 

Here is my firts Kinetic F/A-18C with the Gunze H307 on top.

 

 

And H308 on the bottom. I supose once I hit it with the matt coat it will become a little lighter.

 

 

Heres the H307 again. I hope I'll manage to finish the top coat with simila hue to the one here.

 

 

Although, before I started having problems with Pactra paints, I managed to achieve something like that. I really liked the hue I got from them. Unfortunatly, recently I had trouble with surface tension with these paints. They would pool up in some places and leave holes on others. Something like pouring paint on an oily surface. But it's only with these paints. Or perhaps its because they are just old jars.

 

I figured I might as well try out the Hataka A037 It feels a bit more blueish and a tiny bit darker than H308. I painted all the weapons with it. But then again, I hit the bombs and missiles with a more consistent coat of gray. I hit the speedbrake with the most consistent layer of H307 too. Can You see that purplish/violet sheen? Or am I imagining things?

Perhaps I should use the Hataka paint as the top colour. Now that is an idea..

 

I'll have to figure out if I'm leaving the paintjob as it is, or spray a thin coat of, say, a little lighter light ghost gray all over the appropriate surfaces. I'll probably go back to painting the Hasegawa Hornet with Pactra paints, although I had some trouble with paint surface tension. I'll get some more of it and then try it out.

Thanks for stopping by!

 

[annie.shikinami]

 i definitely see the purple-ish hue. i've had a similar thing happen once with 307 and i just chalked it up to using a different primer than my usual light grey or black as well as some different colors in my undercoat. 

 

On 8/14/2023 at 3:58 AM, Thadeus said:

This is actually my second attempt at putting pilots in 1/48 jet. I did it a lot of times in 1/72 though. Not an experience I'd like to repeat. It's sad how much they have to sacrifice to get the job. At the very least feet. I did have to sand them a bit in the place where I wouldn't want to have sanding stick.

What markings are You going for?

 

 

i've put pilots in a few jets - the Meng Super Hornet and a Tamiya F-14D, and those fit mostly fine, probably because they were meant to be there.(i think i still had to amputate feet for the Meng crew) i think my problem with my last hornet was made worse by trying to cram in a couple of guys from a Hasegawa kit into a Kinetic bird. the worst part is that i'm not any good at all at painting them! haha.

 

i did mine in VMFA-115 markings btw. it's actually finished now and i've already gone on to my next two hornets. 

On 8/14/2023 at 3:58 AM, Thadeus said:

It's a very nice touch to include such a terrific masking medium.

 

 

for me part of the excitement of opening a new set of aftermarket resin parts is more sponge for the sponge drawer.

[Thadeus]

On 8/16/2023 at 4:35 PM, annie.shikinami said:

 i definitely see the purple-ish hue. i've had a similar thing happen once with 307 and i just chalked it up to using a different primer than my usual light grey or black as well as some different colors in my undercoat. 

 

 

i've put pilots in a few jets - the Meng Super Hornet and a Tamiya F-14D, and those fit mostly fine, probably because they were meant to be there.(i think i still had to amputate feet for the Meng crew) i think my problem with my last hornet was made worse by trying to cram in a couple of guys from a Hasegawa kit into a Kinetic bird. the worst part is that i'm not any good at all at painting them! haha.

 

i did mine in VMFA-115 markings btw. it's actually finished now and i've already gone on to my next two hornets. 

 

for me part of the excitement of opening a new set of aftermarket resin parts is more sponge for the sponge drawer.

 

Nice. Can't go wrong with -115.

 

I used Hasegawa pilots on mine. They fit fine on Hasegawa seats IIRC.

 

Not much of an update here.

I managed to gloss coat the entire model and did some minor detail paining in the wheel wells. I also painted the rings by the exhaust, exhaust and all the pylon sway braces. Plus the nose cone. So pretty much all that is left is to decal the beast.

 

 

Fun fact. Flaps, tailplanes, pylons and speedbrake are all just pressed into place. I absolutelly have to make a low-vis Hornet. Love the effect even if it's exaggerated by the lighting setup.

 

 

 

I also did some work on the weapons. First, the thermal coating on the GBU's was done with Pactra light ghost gray with the rest being painted in Hataka light ghost gray. Frankly, the difference in colour is not as big as I remembered. Huh. Still the Pactra paint is different colour. Both of the bombs are from Kinetic. So they should be similar diameter. I'll have to check that.

 

 

 

All the other stuff is painted too. I had some trouble deciding on what colour the TACTS pod should be so I made two. I've not seen the gray pod on the VFC-12 jets. At least not on the splintered ones. But I'll have to do some more research on that. The CATM-9 should have the fins blue apparently too. All that training weaponry is giving me the a headache. Next up, decals.

 

 

 

Thanks for stopping by.

 

I'm having some huge problems posting. I tried it three times already. And everytime I get some problem. I'll see what I can do about it, if it fails I'll probably have to contact someone.

Edited August 22, 2023 by Thadeus
one more try to add pics.

[Thadeus]

Ok. I can't for the love of me find out what I'm doing wrong.

 

So I'll just add the pics without text.

 

 

 

[Thadeus]

Ok, I really thought decaling this beast would be easy. It really wasn't easy, but then again, it wasn't hard. I just wasn't as focused as I should.  Not as tedious as masking the entire thing though. When I built the 1/32 version I chose the dumbest way around - masking the outline of each tiger stripe. So I figured decals would be foolproof. Well. Not foolproof enough for me 😉

 

 

I begun with some of the places, where stripes are easy to locate, such as around the national insignia, nose modex and the speedbrake. I figured the further from these places, the less precise I really have to be with placement. A lot of the stripes are single pieces, with only a few being grouped together with some clear film. I chose to cut them up into single stripes and maneouver in desired spot. Mind You, while I thought this will be easy I didn't consider it to be trouble free. Designing a set of such decals encompassing the entire airframe seems like an extremely hard task. Making them easy to use is even harder.

 

 

One thing to note, as it was a major concern when building the 1/32 scale Hornet is the colour of the stripes. Instruction says they're 36118 but to me they are more like 36081 with a bit of blueish tone. They do look nice when applied, but not really gunship gray.

 

 

So there were a couple of mistakes made and a couple of problems with decals scaling. First one would be the speedbrake decal. The artwork seems ok, but the stripes attached to it are a little too short. You can do as I did and add overlap the fuselage decals on them then cut them at the edge of the speedbrake. Or You can just paint the appropriate colour to fill in the blank. Not a biggie. Had the decal be on a flat surface it would probably fine.

Ok, one from me. I did the speedbrake decal first and then the large stripe just aft of it. Added the elevator decals which were one piece and then add the inner fin decals. I should've put more attention to what I was doing there, as i made my first big f.up - the stripe on the fin should connect to the stripe on the fuselage. Yup. That I only noticed a long while later as I already made a few additional similar mistakes.

Another general note - You can easilly make the stripes that are in several parts overlap one another. I just chose not to.

 

 

 

This is the area I had the most trouble. The stripes are separated into three parts - the canopy part, the side fuselage part and the LERX part. The side fuselage parts are a little too high for their locations, so You could make them overlap the canopy part, which in turn is mostly too short.

 

This, luckilly, is the only place I slided the decal out of place when I handled the model. I didn't see it untill well over a third day of decalling, and I couldn't remove it. Some delicate painting will be in orded here. Shame, as the decal was scaled beutifully for this spot.

 

 

Again, I didn't check the elevator stipe placement when I put the decal in the center. It should match the elevator stripe roughly in this position.

 

And again...  This time x2.

 

 

Overall, not that bad for an 8 hour work. I could make more mistakes really. I lost focus quite a few times, when I should've just look at what I'm doing, check how everything lines up. Some stripes ended up a little bit off their proper location, but You'll have hard time finding them (I hope), except for the places with an obvious landmark - the unit designation and a few stripes near it - I should've probably put that one first, then add stripes.

 

Overall however, the result is quite impressive. A few touchups here and there and You get an obvious eye catcher out of the box. The decals themselves were a pleasure. Thin, but not brittle, they didn't fold on themselves (except for like one or two places), didn't tear unless brutally handled (and I did a few times).  You can see both of the instances on the right elevator. Decals went into the panel lines almost by themselves. A little Micro Set and Micro Sol only had to help a little.

 

Literally, the only drawback of the sheet is the lack of any stenciling and slime light decals. Having some decals for the weapons would be nice too. Still, it's my favourite Kinetic Hornet boxing so far.

 

Thanks for stopping by. Have a great weekend.

[BastianD]

It is impressive what you achieved here, realising you did it by air brushing and not with the decals. Really stunning!

[Thadeus]

11 hours ago, BastianD said:

It is impressive what you achieved here, realising you did it by air brushing and not with the decals. Really stunning!

 

Ah, I should've been clearer. The 1/48 Kinetic Hornet I'm doing using kit decals. But for the 1/32 Academy Hornet I did it by airbrushing. They are similar schemes, but the big one was from 2005, and a different BuNo, not ATARS.

 

The 1/32 Academy F/A-18D is by far my favourite model. Wish I had space for one more. So here's one more pic of the beast. Once the Kinetic bird is finished I hope for some comparison photos.

 

[BastianD]

Indeed what a beast!

[Thadeus]

So... what better way to start 2024 than with a finished Hornet? I can't think of a better way 😉

 

First, there were some tiny details I almost forgot. Like the ecm bulge on the nose landing gear door.

 

 

A few moments later... Proudly guestimated part. Almost correct, but I noticed that a while after I finished the entire model and was checking out some pics I still had on my computer...

 

 

I was a bit afraid my masks would leave nasty glue marks on the canopy. Happy to report, almost no residue was found and almost no paint got though masks.

 

Oh, one thing. I had to fill some gaps where the decals didn't meet. I tried Gunze 36118 and 36081 but they seemed either much too light or much too dark. Out of the jar the Gunze Extra Dark Sea Gray was pretty good match. Slightly different hue, yes, but it is barely noticable. You can see my touchupsby the canopy frame and at the leading edge of the LERX.

 

 

 

I'm pretty happy with the way the ATARS windows came out. I did have huge problems fitting left nose gear door.

 

 

And just before I glued the Litening pod I figured I should make it more accurate. I've seen a lot of Hornets with -28 pod, and frankly I thought all of them had the air intake on the left side. Just after I did that I found a pic of "My" jet with the regular pod. That's probably why I didn't do the cut during the assembly... See? https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/7023137

 

 

 

So... after 60 hours and 20 minutes in the making, over more than a year I can call it complete. Sorry for the bad quality pics, they were the best I could do apparently. The fact they hide most of my mistakes isn't half bad either.

 

 

 

 

Check out these lovelly Tiger stripes. They line up pretty good allover, except for some of the mistakes I showed You before. The coolness factor of the overall scheme offsets the pain of having to source out every stencil from the spares box.

 

 

Awesome thing is, there was literally almost no silvering on the decals. Always a problem when You have to deal with decals with large carrier film. Plus I'm generally not too good dealing with these kind of troubles.

 

If I had to do another one I'd do it in a heartbeat. Something tells me 2024 can be a year of the Hornet...

 

Very hard decision is right in front of me. Hasegawa or Hobby Boss next? Hasegawa is easier with the paintjob but I want to try out different paints this time for the basic camo. Hobby Boss is harder paintjob and I have some colour decisions to do, but there is a lot of coolness factor in splinter scheme... Decisions...

 

Thanks for stopping by!

 

[speedlimit]

Nicely done!

[phantom]

 

looks good!

[Thadeus]

On 1/6/2024 at 3:16 AM, speedlimit said:

Nicely done!

 

Thanks a lot!

 

On 1/6/2024 at 9:50 PM, phantom said:

 

looks good!

 

Thank You very much!

 

I'm still in the game. The Hasegawa and Hobby Boss Hornets will not build themselves.

 

I've decided to go with Hasegawa first.

 

But before that, I wanted to do some color checking. Apparently it's something I'm doing all the time now.

I migh have mentioned, My favourite colour for the 36375 and 36320 was always Pactra colours. Very similar to the old Model Master Acryl paints, but I feel a touch lighter. So I bought myself a jar of each, tested it agains the Hataka and Gunze colours, as these I had readilly available. I don't like the blueish intensity of the Gunze H308 and H307, and I always feel they are just too dark on the model. So I took my favourite 3x3cm plastic cards and painted them Tamiya Nato Black.

And I have to say, I was a bit surprised. From top to bottom - Pactra, Gunze, Hataka. Left is dark ghost gray, right is light ghost gray.

 

 

 

Apparently, Gunze colours were the lightest of the three. I went through my notes, and I usually added a drop of two of white to the Pactra paints. But then I kind of got it - I didn't use black basing back then. So basicly, what I found out (and what I should have figured out without testing) is that my painting technique causes problems I was having. Because of the black base and marbling I had some cool effects on the paintjob. But in order to preserve them I had to spray the base paint quite thin and add many layers leaving some of that black visible for the effect. It also accentuated the blueish hue of Gunze paints.

 

So my task now is to attempt at matching the colour of the chip to the actual model. I did kind of achieved that by using mixed H308 and white. I guesstimate I mixed 1:3 of the white to gray colour. In this lighting I really liked the effect.

 

 

Light ghost gray chips - from left to right Hataka, Pactra, Gunze.

 

 

To contrast it I migh use Gunze H307 with no white... Although the Pactra colour seems pretty nice to my eye.

Top one is Gunze, bottom is Hataka, right one is Pactra.

 

 

Well, next stop - dark ghost gray. I must be crazy to like this...

 

 

I suppose what would help would be to paint the entire model 36375 and only then paint the topside 36320. Of course, what doesn't help in anticipating the final colour is that the Gunze paints are a bit glossy.

 

 

[Thadeus]

Yesss Yess Yes. I have become a man. I know fire... Hold... I know fs 36320.

 

After some careful deliberation I figured I'll stick with Gunze H307 as a top coat. After careful calculations I cheerfully guesstimated the mix of white and gray and added literally a 1/4 less of it.

 

 

 

That pic came out quite light. IRL the demarcation line is a bit more visible. Here i did it freehand, while on the rear fuselage I used elevators as masking templates.

 

 

And You know what? I did not like it. So I took what I had left in the jar, added a lot of thinner, added a little bit of white paint and misted the entire model. Then I added some more white paint and I did some more touchups. And I guess I found "my" own way of painting a Hornet. I might have gone a tiny little bit overboard with all the highlights and touchups. Just a tiny bit.

 

 

See the difference thouhg? I love how darker the dark ghost gray is in comparison to the light ghost gray. And it's not purplish blue just blue. Still, not the hue I'd like, it seems to be a little bit too blue for my taste, but I guess that's just Gunze ghost grays. I know I'm being full of myself, but it's a massive win for me.

 

 

And... well... I effed up massivelly on the white. I used Tamiya X-2 white straight over the black. I figured it would be better to paint white first and then mask it. I waited 24 hours before masking and everything seemed fine. But it wasnt.

 

 

At first I thought this was tape residue. I've had some very rare ocasions in which Tamiya tape left some residue on the clear parts. It was a bit sticky and everything.

But it didn't go away with the soapy water.

 

Well. Apparently that was the paint. I sprayed several very thin coats of paint. And It must have not dried properly on the underside. After I applied masking tape it stuck to it and roughed up the paint. Well, now I know. Wait longer with Tamiya paints.

 

 

I was going to take a while off after that. But just on the next day I decided to re-engage. After I wet sanded most of the paint I chose to paint the stabilators with Gunze H316. It's not a perfect job but short of stripping everything it seems to be the best I could do.

 

 

I might go over this with some P3000 wet sandpaper. Since I was at it I painted the metal parts - I used Vallejo Metal Color aluminium for the exhaust rings and Vallejo dull aluminium for the gun muzzle panel.

What I also did I masked the rings with tape I had just used on the white. Trully brilliant move on my part. Luckilly for me most of the white paint on the tape had dried already. So, some touch ups are required here.

 

 

Ok, one massive win, one large loss and one stupid mistake seems like an ok win to loss ratio. Next step should be decals (after a gloss coat). But I used Authentic decals for the VMFA-312 jet in 1/72. And I still remember they silvered quite badly when I built three 1/72 Academy F/A-18's. So I might mask the black checkerboard. Not the thing I'm too happy with, but I guess this is the only place I can actually save myself from using Authentic Decals decal sheet. It's not an easy task cutting out a hundred 3x3mm squares. And making them all even. And applying them evenly. I'll have to get myself one of these metal cutting boards. I've used one for the circle templates and it worked more or less as advertised.

 

I hope next time I'll come around these parts I'll have a nice black and white checkered tail on my Hornet.

Thanks for stopping by!

[Thadeus]

So... I got myself a nice multi sized cutting board. For squares from 2 mm to 3.5 mm. Apparently the squares on the Autheitic Decals sheet are 3.4mm. My paint layer apparently didn't cure well enough as the masking tape was showing some residue. A little bit which may be just some glue trace that would go away after a gloss coat.

But I decided to go with decals. First decision try the tip decals or the checkerboard. I went with checkerboard.

They tore a bit, but I didn't want the main decal coated over with clear decal film, as it was already quite thick.

Eventually I managed to put down both of them. Not the best But I could live with it. There will be some masking and painting required as I struggled to apply the decal as it appeared on the actual aicraft. The decal angle didn't correspond 100% with the Hasegawa leading edge of the tail part.

 

 

There will be some work needed on the lower area of the fin. Let's call it passable - so that's a win right?

 

 

I did apply my usual decal coat on the coloured checkerboards. I don't know what happened (that seems to be the theme for the tail of this Hornet) but it broke in a few pieces, with some of them simply geting disintegrated. I was going to overlap the decal in the middle, but it also tore at the back. Frankly, I don't like how the entirety of this checkerboard thing looks right now and I'm not sure I can fix this. Also, notice how transparent these colours are. I should've gone with these decals first, then apply the large checkerboard. This way I could have removed the toom long squares. Not enough planning on my part I guess.

 

 

But this also shows, I'm going to have a huge problem fitting the CVW tail code. Even bigger than in 1/72.

 

Right now I'm not sure what to do with it. Options seem to exist - I can try and design myself checkerboard black decals and print them, or I can strip the whole thing and repaint it white with thicker paint, and then try to mask it again. That is quite a lot of work though... And lining up all these squares isn't really what I'm good at. Apparently.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

[Thadeus]

Not well thought of... I guess this could be my idea of a theme for this build. I have dusted off my Inkscape skills and done a few of proper checkerboard decals, plus some mesh decals for the gun gas vents. So all I need is a printer. And decal paper. So armed with that I tried to remove the decals. Not a lot of success.

 

This gave me the idea - Since I will probably have to strip paint and repaint it, I might try and fix the mess I have. I quickly cut a few 1.2 mm strips of paint and attempted to mask the outermost rows of squares.

 

 

While I was at it I painted the addidional row of squares on the undersides. And fixed a few larger squares.

 

\

 

 

Ok, I admit, in person it looked a little better. I can see a few places I might need to mask and spray black.

 

 

On the other side I've found out I painted the colour trims a bit too far apart. I can see that I probably placed the lagre checkerboard colour a little too low as it's how I measured the position of the red trim...

Some tiny repaints are in order as well.

 

 

So in the end I might not need to print decals afterall. All I need to do is fix a few squares here and there. The thickness of the checkerboard decal seems now to be the least of my worries, as I tried to apply the rest of decals. They are quite non-conforming to curves, some will not stick. So I guess at least I'll have consistency in my decals.

 

I'll post a proper update about decaling when I finish.

 

Thanks for stopping by.

 

[HOLMES]

WOW !!

It looks Phenomenal and extraordinary. 

STUNNING  job.

[Thadeus]

Thanks Holmes!

 

So. I actually finished the kit. But with some personal stuff happening I wasn't really into posting things or frankly keeping track of every step.

 

So... the tail fins almost cost me my sanity. See, apart from all the troubles with checkerboards, red and yellow trims, I knew there would be trouble with opacity of the CVW tailcode. After a few not so brilliant ideas I came up with something I figured will be easier. I will make a white background for my decals. I copied decals on my printer, and masked around the masking tape. I thought of cutting the shape, but this seemed a little bit easier for me. After each letter was complete I detached the masking tape from paper and put them on my cutting board.

 

 

After all the letters were done and just prior to spraying white I transfered my stencil to the model hoping I'll manage to place them more or less evenly.

 

 

The checkered area was gloss coated before, but still I lifted tiny bit of slime light during tests. So I had to invert the masking tape, so that the tacky surface was facing out.

I couldn't spray thick enough coat of white paint, but that much I figured would be ok-ish.

 

 

and voila! more or less. Next time I'll have to make the masks a tiny bit smaller than the letters. You can see a little bit of white just by the 'C'.

 

 

Next thing troublesome were the national insignia. See, Authentic Decal used too big star and bars - they should be a little smaller than the ones usually applied to Hornets. Or perhaps that is just the new standard size.  They should be similar in size to the Kinetic F/A-18C ones. I found a single old 1/72 Fujimi F-4C decals that had stars of similar size. I just didn't like the cream white colour.

 

 

I couldn't find any decals of appropriate size available in my neck of the woods. At least not ones readilly available. But I figured, paint masks seem to be good enough. So I got some from Armycast. There are a lot of different insignia sizes. I chose one of the smaller ones - 12" or 10" I believe.

 

Now. I've never used such masks and frankly, I had no idea how to work them. I applied each layer, beginning with white background.

 

 

Then I took all the rest of the mask set and transfered it to the already placed mask.

 

 

If You want to do this, I suggest don't. It's a pain in the rear, and at this point I figured I just should've stuck to decals.

 

 

Eventually, three out of four markings came out mediocre, and one came out crooked.

 

 

They look much better from afar.

 

 

This is the worst one. I was so fed up with all this stuff I just left it as such. Frankly, I probably should've put the insignia to the edge of the electronics bay panel. Somehow looking at pictures I figured I should put it more aft.

 

So... about the decals. Well. They look ok-ish on the sheet. However, there were some trouble applying them. One should coat every decal with decal film. Just in case.

Another thing, red decals usually don't want to conform to curved surfaces. And the 'MARINES' decal didn't want to conform to my strengthening plates. Not much I could do with Micro Set and Micro Sol. Some of the decals are of wrong shape. For instance, the 'CHECKERBOARDS' decal has letters that are too short, some of the lettering on the stencils are too big - You can see that by the left national insignia and gun ammo door, same applies to the elevator position triangles. I also feel the intake warning triangle is too long and too wide, with arms being too skinny. I also feel the checkerboard tiles are a bit undersized. Perhaps they should be 3,5 mm, not 3,4 mm. You can see that by the position of the red trim on the tail and the red position light. It's almost at the line.

All in all, this is the only option I know for this scheme.

 

Next up was weathering and matt coat. I had some little trouble with attaching gear legs and gear door actuators. And I wanted to do that before the final coat, so the matt coat would even out any glue spills I'd have.

 

After that, there was some finishing cockpit work. I replaced the Aires SJU-5 supplied with the resin cockpit set with Quickboost F-14D seat. It fits almost perfectly. Good thing too, as I really messed up the upper seatbelts and harness.

 

 

Next up - finished pics.

[Thadeus]

As I wrote earlier - I managed to finish the Hasegawa model. After more than 67 hours of work over 2.5 years.

 

Of course I overdid the weathering. The streaks on the upper wing surfaces should either not be there for my timeframe, or should be much lighter, assuming I depicted the jet mid-cruise.

 

I am very happy with the grays however. They look right to me. A tiny bit too blue perhaps. I'll make some comparison shots in the future.

 

 

 

 

This is as close to natural look of the model as I could achieve. On a sunny day in my kitchen.

 

 

 

 

So... next stop I guess will be the VFC-12 jet. Pretty cool...

Thanks for stopping by.

[Geoff M]

That is a great paint scheme and you managed to make it look very good.  👍