Back to the build
The kit is a Academy 1:48 Hunter F6 which I must say contains zero filler and went together flawlessly, I’m that impressed Ive purchased another two!
The cockpit was started as per instructions but I omitted the ejector seat as the kit item is well known to be out of scale with the rest of the kit.
A wash of medium grey was all that was used on the cockpit as with a resin seat and the canopy closed you wouldn’t see much detail.
I left the engine intakes out because my intention was to build it with covers etc so these wouldn’t be seen.
The fuselage was buttoned up with no issues, using Tamiya extra thin glue to zip around and seal it up.
With that done the separate nose section was treated to a kiss in the bench grinder to create the hole for the Harley light as on the 1/1 aircraft.
This was filled with a disc of silver card superglued in the end and to finish off the lens was PVA glue teased over.
The aircraft was pre-shaded with a Windsor & Newton Pro-Marker black pen.
The masking was done with the wings and tail plane off to allow a dead straight mask line. Using electricians tape I masked the white off to allow the grey to be painted, with the tape still in place I showed Jezz Coleman my progress and he suggested that I post-shade with a drop or two of white in the grey and give it some tonal variety to break up the bland flat grey.
Invaluable advice as it really makes the model “pop”, something I’ve never tried before but will continue to work it into future builds!