The Unofficial Airfix Modellers' Forum

Still delayed by cold weather and resin sanding ....

Progress so far, paint on, just needs decals, overwing tanks and red top missiles and she is done!!. Trying to find my VG conversion set for the Lightning so I can do that.
(sorry about the blurry pic).

That looks very smart in that scheme and I see one of Frog's wonderful Skybase stands there too!

David

dwomby wrote:That looks very smart in that scheme and I see one of Frog's wonderful Skybase stands there too!

David

Yes, it's looks good to me!, took a couple of goes to get the grey right. The idea is to mount the model on the stand in a straight up (or as near as the pivot allows) pose.

That's looking really good Marky - Nice work. It'll look good on that Skybase!

jRatz wrote:Still delayed by cold weather and resin sanding ....

No worries John - This is an SB after all.

As it is a week of sleepless nights has slowed my bench time to a trickle...

Same boat for me. Zero bench time since Mrs. Kit broke her leg.

Ugh - that French plastic! I just cracked a seam and the split then went an inch up the side of the fuselage (along one of those 'fault lines' visible in an earlier pic)! It can be fixed but it's frustrating.

David

dwomby wrote:Ugh - that French plastic! I just cracked a seam and the split then went an inch up the side of the fuselage (along one of those 'fault lines' visible in an earlier pic)! It can be fixed but it's frustrating.

David

Sorry to hear that David!

Kitaholic wrote:Same boat for me. Zero bench time since Mrs. Kit broke her leg.

oh no! Very sorry to hear that!

I managed to get an hour on this today - so I masked up the silver and painted on some Humbrol 109 Ocean Grey - I got the tonal variations by dabbing the paint on and having a pot of clean thinners to dip the brush into now and then - and working it into the paint.





I've made a bit of a hash of the exhaust fitting and around the top of the tail planes so I'm going need to tidy the up before further painting.

Cheers

Stuart

Stuart,

Did you have trouble fitting the canopy? Test fitting mine leaves a big gap on the starboard rear edge.

What's the paint technique you're using - is the grey applied over the silver? What are you masking with?

I have made some progress - mostly PSR on the silver one but they both now have decent cannon ports and the wings are done ready to fit when the fuselages are smooth enough. I also fixed the crack that I made in the grey fuselage.

The grey one will be an F1 from 74 Squadron and the silver one will be an F2 from 19 squadron WITHOUT its belly tank.



David

Those are looking really good David - I admit I'd forgotten about the gun ports on mine.

I did have the same nasty gap yes - I think those bloody awful 'snap' together tabs have made a mess of things. I sanded mine to shape as best I could and the stuck it down with Tamiya Extra thin whilst keeping the pressure on it. I then filled around the canopy with some 'perfect plastic putty'. The Lightning had quite large canopy framing which should help hide things - I agree though - It's a pig.

For the painting I used Humbrol 11 (silver) on the undersides (I quite like Humbrol 11, it's a nice metallic that dulls down well under matt). I then masked it up and painted on a coat of Humbrol 109 Ocean Grey to the whole uppers - I'll do a few coats and then I'll draw the camo lines in with watercolour pencil and then paint with Humbrol 30. It's all brush painted with thinned Humbrol Enamels and a no.4 Humbrol Evoco round tipped brush - dabbed onto the surface with some extra thinner to keep things flowing - I'll do about 3 coats of each.

Cheers

Stuart

Thanks for the description of the painting, Stuart.

Don't worry about forgetting your cannon ports. Oddly, the F3 never had cannons. It was a missiles-only job!

David

dwomby wrote:Thanks for the description of the painting, Stuart.

Don't worry about forgetting your cannon ports. Oddly, the F3 never had cannons. It was a missiles-only job!

David

Result! Thanks David.

I wonder if it was still carrying Firestreaks in 1983?

I do wonder why they were still using the F.3 in the 1980's when surely the F.6 was a better option.

I need to get myself a decent Lightning reference book.

Cheers

Stuart