Grant

I like the BMF colour scheme. Is it just a faded photo or is the blue really that 'dull'? Grant

A complex colour scheme that has turned out really well. Good job on that one. Now to photoshop the aircraft OUT and the model IN! cheers Grant

As the rear deck behind the seat is very visible through the canopy, I ought to make the effort to paint it the right colours. Can anybody help? cheers Grant

The Italians are well represented in this GB. This one should look good. Good luck Grant

Hi Col - it just a new tin of Humbrol no. 19 Red. New tins of green, black, purple and old tins of various shades of grey have all been fine, but this tin of red takes about 3 days to dry ready for masking. Julien - That's interesting, but the blue goes on tomorrow. I have to say, the 'Blue Angles' blue doesn't seem blue enough for the Blue Angles, but looks quite good for the Frecce! cheers Grant

Yes, it has finally dried. Wings masked grey undercoat on, gloss black to follow later. Cheers Grant

Blinking red paint will not dry! Grrr. I painted the green Sunday morning and it was dry by the evening, but the red is not cooperating. I haved trouble with this tin before, so guess where that is going to end up... cheers Grant

I started with a confused frown and ended with a laugh. A brilliant bit of whiffery, very well done. cheers Grant

Ooh! A red Red. Nice one. Grant

Undersides of wings and tailplane painted (shame the red is taking forever to dry) Looking at that overspray on the fuselage, perhaps I should have used a bit more masking tape. We'll see when it comes to the black undercoat for the BMF. Hopefully it should be a coat of paint an evening (3 to go), as am back to work this week. Then the decals (and all those stencils!) so targeting a weekend finish... cheers Grant

A nice looking model. Unfortunately, seeing yours gets me thinking I really ought to do something about highlighting the tape on the wings on mine. cheers Grant

That has got the GB off to a cracking start. It looks really good with the hood cracked open. cheers Grant

That's looking very good. Nice recovery. cheers Grant

A most serious case of AMS! Cool resource though. cheers Grant

Rare sights this side of the pond. Looking forward to seeing these come together. cheers Grant

Many thanks for the info Giorgio. Interesting the debate over black or not. Looking at one photo of an aircraft in a museum it had a black colour scheme, but a blue frame to the canopy! I will use the exiting paint I have, but will spray the whole model black first, so that may darken it slightly. The black was originally just going to be for the BMF on the fuselage lower surface. Anyway, some more progress. Don't these things come together quickly when you button all the panels up for flight?! The main u/c doors were a tight fit (unlike the nose wheel door!), and I forgot about the lubricating effects of glue and pushed the doors in too far and couldn't get them out again! So filled up the hole to give a level fit with the wing skin. No for some undercoat to see how bad my sanding down is... cheers Grant

Bummer! But thank you for sharing - it is nice to know I am not the only one (I nearly stuck some exhaust fairings the wrong way round on my WNW SE5. Lickily it was just late and not booze induced) Good luck with the fiddly masking. cheers Grant

Ummm. I was going to paint it the same blue. (Xtracolour Blue Angels Blue) I have seen several colour photos where the aircraft were black, the original colour. The one blue photo I had seen didn't look that different. Clearly, I will need to do some more digging. Thanks for the info. cheers Grant

Been a good weekend for progress. I was a bit worried about endless rounds of filling/rubbing but the intake went together really well and was seamless in no time. Here is the blue suited Italian (I hope it was blue in those days!) in his office. A bit of plasticard is added at the back for support when on display. I have a supply of 6mm plastic and 5mm carbon fibre rods and, unfortunately, the jet pipe is about 4.8mm diameter! So I thought, fine, I'll just drill it out and only loose about 1mm from the end of the pipe. Well it did'nt quite happen like that. The plastic split and I lost about 3mm from the end. Shame, but it is the colour scheme that is important here, so I can live with that. Here is the support rod in place. I'll probably put a notch in the end to give a bit more control over attitude when displayed. cheers Grant

If your not happy with that one (!?!), I expect great things from this one You're right though, the first with a (proper) Red Arrow. Good Luck. cheers Grant

I was planing on doing that for the 'turkish stars' F-5. Didn't know there was an F-86 kit of the Swans. Should have guessed from Tony's thread, but as he has sent me a scan, and the aerodecal sheet does the rest, I'll continue with the masking idea. cheers Grant

How cool is that - decals and badge from the crew. Interesting scheme to paint. To use the decals I would probably 'paint - decal strip - klear' and repeat as necessary. That way you can mask to the edge of the decal. but realistically it might be easier to - spray on the white and black and put thin strips of masking tape over it where required, then paint in the greys and blues. It won't be exactly the same as the decals, but it will be close and probably easiest. Good Luck Grant

Good luck with the paint mixing! cheers Grant

There is a story to those decals. I was at a club members house, with my book on aero teams, and mentioned I felt like doing 'then and now' with F-86s as the' then', but didn't know of any suitable decals. At which point the host vanished upstairs and two minutes later came down with a folder, open at the sleeve with those decals in! An amzing memory and/or filing system. So I became the new owner of a set of decals that covered 2 aircraft I wanted to do. Then a month later I stumbled across this GB!! It's Karma I tell you I just hope I can do the favour justice. cheers Grant

I like the display idea. These are 'aerobatic' teams so we should have lots in the air (plus I am not a fan of painting wheels!) cheers Grant