ChrisL

I have an airbrush, I dug out the rattlecan in a fit of laziness, thinking I could get that stage done without having to set up the compressor, airbrush, sorting out the varnish, cleaning up after myself, etc. So much for saving my time! A quick experiment shows that I could get some mileage out of sanding down some areas, but it'll need to be combined with repainting, particularly where there's raised detail and/or decals nearby. I'll be sure to post a picture if I (a) get it finished, (b ) discover a new problem with I attempt to remove the canopy masking, or (c ) throw it in the bin in a fit of pique.

I've just had a go putting some Klear down over a discoloured area on the plane's underside. It briefly looked potentially promising while the Klear was still wet but it went back to looking grey/white as the Klear started drying. Darn. I think my options now are to repaint it, trying not to lose the decals, or to give up on it.

It is very noticeable that the areas with decals have not suffered at all. It's particularly obvious where the carrier film is larger than the marking, such as on the tail fin decals. The effect is not constant across all non-decalled areas. Oddly it seems to be less present on those areas that most recently received a coat of black, which makes me wonder whether the Decalfix had something to do with it. To answer Robert's questions - there was a gap of 2 full days between the last paint work on the kit before I applied the matt coat. All the work was done indoors, the plane and the rattle can should have been about the same temperature - they are both kept in the same room. I sprayed the varnish in a spray booth with the window of the room I was working in open. I guess it was cold and damp outside but the window wasn't open for long before I did the spraying. I am not sure how humid my flat is generally but I wouldn't say it's particularly humid or damp. When (or if, after this!) I next use rattle cans I will give some thought to warming them up beforehand. I will try applying some Klear to a bit of the underside of the kit tomorrow to see if that helps things. Regarding the drying booth - how low power a light are we talking? Battery powered? Mains powered? I have a spare 40W desk lamp to hand, I'm not sure what else I could lay my hands on, incandescent bulbs are getting thin on the ground these days.

I'll give that a try, thanks! I have some Klear/Future so if it's worked for you that's the one I'll try first.

This is not actually a work in progress thread. I work so incredibly slowly that updates would be at a geological pace. Rather this is a request for suggestions as to how I may recover a mess I've made. Hopefully this is still the best place in the forum for it. The following happened to my Blackbird egg plane when I attempted to give it a coat of matt varnish last night: It was painted in Humbrol acrylic gloss black (with Humbrol acrylic thinners). Decals were applied using Decalfix, which stained some of the paintwork, so the paint got reapplied in some places. The varnish was from a Humbrol acrylic rattlecan and was applied some time after the painting and decalling. Is there any obvious mistake I might have made? So except for trying to pass it off as some very heavy weathering, are there any suggestions about how I could recover this? I could try applying masking fluid over the decals (none of which have discoloured) then airbrush a coat of matt black back over everything. I could strip everything back to the plastic and try painting it again but I don't think there are any 3rd party decals for the Blackbird egg plane... Given the slow pace of my work I'm loath to abandon even such a small and simple kit as this. Then again the canopy masking has been on for far too long so taking that could well lead to another big mess. Any other ideas?

That is very nice, both the kit and the build! The first ever model kit that I chose for myself was a 1/72 Airfix Typhoon that I got at a trip to Cosford aerospace museum when I was little and I've had a soft spot for the thing ever since, even if the reason I got it was because it was the closest thing to a Spitfire in the shop that I could afford... Time to dig out the 1/48 Vulcan rumours again? Actually it'd be nice to see a new 1/24 jet. I'd be delighted by a Gnat (doesn't seem entirely impossible) or a Sea Hawk (seems very unlikely) in that scale.

I think you've given me a reason to want one more of Airfix's forthcoming 1/48 Gnats than I already wanted.

What do the instructions recommend for painting the orange parts? I remember seeing a review in a magazine of a 1/48 kit or decal set for this scheme that came with its own specially formulated paint because the actual aircraft's orange is a strange semi metallic tone, or something.

A recent Hasegawa F-15E boxing apparently finally gets their kit up to date, but there seems to be quite a lot of surgery involved in building it as you still start out with their F-15D kit and make various modifications to that.

I think the new Hasegawa Strike Eagle kit is one for me, then. Thanks for the help, everyone, and Dazza I hope you got what you needed before I borrowed your thread.

Is the Tiger Meet scheme the only scheme provided with the kit?

To answer my own question, the 1/48 Hasegawa kit tables on modellingmadness.com state: 07318 is the Tiger Meet 2005 kit.

A little bit of a hijack - does anyone know whether the Hasegawa "Tiger Meet 2005" 1:48 F-15E kit has enough upgrades from their original Strike Eagle demonstrator to represent a production Strike Eagle?

Is there a build review available somewhere that highlights the areas of potential pain?

There's been Airfix starter kits in WH Smiths for ages, I've seen them in various branches I've been to for the past few years (which is as long as I'd have been looking). Regular kits and separate paints, etc., would be a change, though.

Well a Gnat would have me hook, line and sinker. I'd dither for maybe a few seconds if it were a Sea Hawk before succumbing. The others won't get me particularly, but I doubt I'm particularly representative of the market as a whole. On the other hand the idea of a 1:24 big cold war jet sounds insane, such a kit would be truly enormous and even more enormously expensive.

I have some of this Humbrol Clear stuff. You can wash your brushes/clean your airbrush with water after using it, so it isn't the same stuff as Klear, which requires something containing amonia for thinning/cleaning.

You're probably thinking of Dark Future, a post apocalyptic Mad Max road warrior sort of thing. I recall thinking it looked pretty awesome back in the late 80s, but the reviews I saw said it didn't play fast enough to feel like a proper frenetic death race.

Going by the posts above, VX281's current paint scheme is not period accurate to begin with. Even compared to EDSG/sky FB.11s there's some obvious differences. On VX281 the undercarriage legs are painted white, not aluminium, and the wheel hubs are different. So it doesn't automatically follow that the wheel wells are the "correct" cololur. That said, some of the pictures I've found online: probably push me towards sky wheel wells. For example, if you look at the original size photo of this one: Hawker Sea Fury by Hippomug, on Flickr It looks like the wheel wells are a dirtier shade of the sky on the underside, doesn't it?

Miggers, I've PMed you about your decal offer. Can anyone who's seen VX281 up close say what colour her wheel wells are? Looking at pictures online the undercarriage bay doors are sky inside and out and the undercarriage itself is white (with one strut in sky), but I can't decide if the wheel wells are sky, aluminium or white.

Thanks for the suggestion Grizzly, but for whatever reason it's the two-tone EDSG/sky (or EDSG/white for FAA jets) schemes that really appeal to me. VX281's yellow spinner is icing on the cake, though. :-)

Ach well. I may need to start creating a decal stash for this, work out what size the various serials, roundels and codes are and work out who sells them.

I was rather taken by the Royal Navy Historic Flight's Sea Fury T.20 when it did a display at the Leuchars Airshow earlier this month. While at the airshow I picked up a PM kit of the T.20. Sadly this comes with decals for two all-over silver paint schemes, not the elegant EDSG/sky and yellow nose scheme that the RNHF's T.20 displays. Does anyone make decals for this aircraft in 1/72?

I have a Hasegawa F-15E kit stashed away for that job. Try and avoid paying extra for one of the kits that comes with photo-etched turkey featherless exhausts, as the Strike Eagle demonstrator had turkey feathers when it was in its charcoal lizard livery. Of course if you don't find an old boxing you'll need decals for the demonstrator too. Wonderland has some Hasegawa Strike Eagles with the PE bits but on offer at a more normal price (about 35 quid I think). Ignore the extra sprues for the LANTIRN pods, the featherless exhausts and the big wheels/tyres. I'll dust off my scanner and hopefully get the camo guides from the old kit scanned in this evening.

The 1/48 Hasegawa Strike Eagle demonstrator kit was based on their F-15D kit. It got a different rear instrument panel, CFTs, 5 MERs and a pile of cluster bombs to fit to them. In addition the instructions pointed out that the gun port on the starboard wing root should be filled in (no mention of its vents, though). They didn't note that both tails should have the large upper fairings but the parts were in the box to do this. AFAIK the most significant departure from the actual Strike demonstrator was that the kit has a production airbrake, not the small one used by the prototypes. If you want to portray a different TF-15A then an additional problem is that the kit's wheels are those of the F-15C/D. The Strike Eagle's wheels were upgraded to these at some point before or while it had its charcoal lizard scheme. Later Hasegawa Strike Eagle kits are based on the demonstrator kit so despite a few additional pieces are apparently not much like production Strike Eagles. So conversely I expect that while Revell and Academy Strike Eagle kits may build into more accurate F-15Es they wouldn't be great bases for TF-15As.