bushande

On the pictures of the original, small white dots can be seen in the outer areas of both wings. I never paid attention to it on the original. No idea what that is, but of course that has to be added to the model as well. Here you notice that you always have to make a cut on perfection when it comes to modelling. There must be some dimensional differences between the model and the original. The small dot is exactly in line with that of the slatson the original. On the model, I have to move it about a millimeter inward so that it lies correctly relative to the Knight's Cross. If I wanted to correct this, I would have to move all the tiger stripes on the wing and then these would again no longer lie correctly. Or I move / enlarge the knight's cross, but then it is no longer correct with the stripes and the raised rivets. Well ... everyone has to die a little death, I guess ...

After I have adjusted the light stain the APU exhaust leaves on the fuselage with weathering pigments and thickened ash particles, there is a final countercheck and yup, all in all about all fix points are about where they should be and as the original . Enough! No more thinking about it, otherwise my brain will turn into gelly!

After I compared everything a perceived 100x with the original until I had square eyes, I sealed everything again with Future and carefully smoothed the entire model including all surfaces outside of the decals with 2000 sandpaper and removed any bumps and orange peel. Then everything was covered several times with a satin flatt finish, until - at least in my eyes - it about matched the light effect that the Tiger foil created on the original. Is it is perfect? No! Are there discrepancies? Most definitely! But as it is now, it does suffice for me.

After I had taken care of all the details, I must not miss the small details that can only be applied after the decal film, such as the raised formation flight stripes or the small GPS bump!

So .... the rest of the decals are put on and so far everything looks not too bad. Of course, the edges and subtleties still have to be cut and evened out, but basically everything is as largely where it was on the original, at least for my terms. (Here can guess what it would have looked like if, like the Bronze Tiger at the time, the whole thing had been applied in gloss. Conclusion: Naaaaawwww, semi flatt finish was just fine hihihihi)

There are some spots where the stripes do not blend very precisely and smoothly into eachother. But this is not a mistake, it is intentional. As it was with the original, so I want it to be on the model. Except for the staggered stripes on the spine. I'll not imitate that, otherwise it would look too much like an accident in decalling. I will leave a thin line there as on the original, but otherwise will match the stripes as much as possible and imitate the differences in the foiling between the sides on the original only by moving the decal template on the PC:

So .... a new attempt with new decal foil and so far so good. At least in my eyes, all the essential fix points match quite well and the stripes are largely where they were in the original:

At least now I know which decal foil isn't working. Now I can do a nice diorama of def-oliation hihihihi:

So ..... first try ... drum roll ...... aaaaaaaaaaand ........................poop!

After I had matched the various fixed points that I had laid on the original with the markings for the model as far as I was able, I did a first test print with different foils and layouts:

Henceforth back to the digital drawing board:

Alright, lets get this finsihed; on to the final round. After I have adapted the original templates to the kit meassures in a first round, there is a first test print on paper. let's see where we stand and weeeeell .... it at least roughly seems to fit quite well. Of course there are still a lot of details that don't really want to fit properly as on the original yet. In particular, the intersections between the wing and fuselage contain one or two details, which are not quite as they should be relative to the original:

And with that I am turning to the heart of the project, away from the modelling table and the PC to adjust the Ghost Tiger decals!

The stupid thing with too clean planes is that the models far too quickly look like toys, even more so if they have a special paint job, and there is nothing worse for the modeller! Luckily, towards the end the Ghost Tiger already looked a tiny wee bit "battered" around the belly, so I don't do anything wrong if I age it a little. (You can see, that two missile clips fell off. Note: already fixed again hihihi)

Little excercise, big impact. I always put some silver paper under the clear parts of the position lights so that it looks a little more ...... "alive":

Here is another example in which the Revell stencils are quite ok. in a way, but unfortunately just do not want to fit the kit they are made for. Revell provides a large stencil bundle for the warning markings around the emergency rescue punch in panel. So far so good, but unfortunately it doesn't fit if you want to put it as a whole on the respective spot. So on the one hand I had to cut again and on the other hand many elements had to be DIYed again because the color just didn't fit the current standard of the original anymore.

Here is just one example of stencils that Revell has forgotten. For instance the missile launchers; there are stencils on the original that are unfortunately missing in Revells sheet. Of course there are more cases like this, I'm afraid:

Oh and a little detail of what you will hopefully see later in the finished model. One of the foiled tanks had the NO STEP stencil, the other one did not!

Even the cooling at the fin has one hihihi:

And with that we can at least apply the basic stencils. Actually, I wanted to use as much of Revell's decal sheet as possible, but after checking the original, I found that I could use them only very limited because they are either out of date or these decals are just not enough. You can hardly see it from a distance, but almost every panel has its own number. Well ... what do you want to do?! Graphics tool, patience, printer and again the DIY modeller is called upon hihihi. Fortunately, the tiger stripes on the top have left out a lot of the regular stencils. That makes it a little easier for me. But the bottom is some proper work. Looooooooots and lots of numbers!

A little late but in addition another little detail of what I got fixed before I applied the color: The antennas under the bow are also on small reinforcements. That was imitated with tape, so it's not a big deal:

After the slats were glued, I installed the small rails and struts. Done:

A small Ghost Tiger-specific detail: It seems 31+00 used to have four instead of two "No Step" stencils per slat. In any case, there are a few color repairs on every slat. You hardly see them, but due to the different surface properties of the color, you can make them out depending on the angle of light, and these spots alternate between appearing a little lighter or darker. I simply taped the spots and went over the TPS with Future a few times. That should roughly imitate the effect. I think/hope you can see that quite well later on the finished model?! The inside of the slats was also painted and a subtle wash should do the trick.

I didn't make much of a fuss to imitate the missile clips; I cut a few pieces of metal again, bent them into the shape of the Missile Wells and glued them in.

After the TPS had been applied, the birdy gets a nice panel wash treatment. I always add oil paints with a little soap in the water. For the Tiffy I mixed gravite particles in a little dark gray.