Unfortunately, I once again failed to plan ahead and take account of the fact that with the tailplanes in place, most of that nice shading effect is hidden from view!
Oh well, at least the shading on the tailplanes themselves is visible.
I painted the radome black, and with the tailplanes in position, it’s starting to look a bit more like it:
Next step was to unmask the white underside and give the whole thing a gloss coat.
I got the panel line wash on the top and bottom sides. I made my own wash from pastel chalks, water and washing up liquid, which seems to work as well as anything else. I did a basic black wash on the upper surfaces and around the control surface gaps, but on the underside I did a pale grey wash which isn’t too stark against the white:
Wheel wells
The wheel wells got a bit more weathering with oily marks and stuff, and there’ll be more streaks and dirt on the airframe when the decals are on – didn’t want to overdo it though, as these were gloss finish aircraft and were kept reasonably clean. I used reference photos to guide my weathering.
Right…decals…the underside decals went on, involving some delicate trimming where the serials passed over the undercarriage doors, and were put to one side for the night with a coat of MicroSol on them:
Decal issues
A bit more weathering and streaking on the underside, and then I could seal it all in with a coat of Johnson’s and call the underside done apart from final assembly.
It’s a good job we modellers are patient folk, isn’t it? I was peacefully applying the topside decals, when I noticed that they’re printed slightly out of register, so that the roundels and the red fin flash all had a nice white border halfway round them, which shows up a treat on EDSG…
Some delicate masking was needed so I could airbrush the border away, holding my breath so that the mask wouldn’t peel off the decal when removed. However, all went well, but it’s still an inconvenience:
It looks a bit obvious here as the new paint is matt as opposed to the gloss-coated surface, but it blended in ok when a new gloss coat was applied. It was all looking so good up until then…
The decals from Model Alliance were a pain to use, generally. Apart from the register problem, they also silvered quite badly despite the use of copious amounts of MicroSet underneath them. It’s a good job the final finish was gloss/semi gloss, as I doubt they’d stand up to scrutiny under a matt coat. The lack of stencils was a pain too, as the ones from the kit were for an FGR.2 and weren’t always the right colour for a dark grey airframe.
I applied the satin varnish to the topside, and apart from showing up a couple of silvered areas on the Model Alliance decals, it went on well. Some silvered areas are visible on the photos, so a bit of careful masking, judicious airbrushing over, and satin coat to finish took care of them. Overall, it knocked back the gloss finish to a more scale effect, and I’m happy enough:
