billn53

I got a coat of matt varnish on, so proceeded to work on the fuselage lights. I removed the masks from the little circular depressions that I had previously painted with chrome paint, and filled the depressions with clear UV resin: The lights on the forward fuselage also got a coat of AK "Real Color" transparent blue: The top of the tail fin has a red light which is represented by a raised rectangular area on the Trumpeter kit. I first painted this chrome, followed by AK's transparent red: There are still a couple more lights to add, but before I tackle those I felt it was time to unmask the canopy. This one's for you, @RidgeRunner 😁

The nose wheel/tire came molded in with the brass undercarriage, and the tire is more squared-off than I would like. But grinding down the brass is a bridge too far for me — I’m sure I would muck up it up!

A few more details dealt with this morning before doing the matt coat . . . Masked and painted the refueling recepticle door and IFF antenna on the nose: Added various blade antennae on the underside: I already had these wingtip lights in the stash. From my "Hanoi Special" build, I recall these were a pain in the a**. The tip pieces are thinner than the wing, requiring significant putty work to blend in, and the joins to the wing are weak (kept breaking off during that build). Adding insult to injury, after you're done you still need to mask the actual lights. This time around, I decided to go a different route and simply cut off the relevant parts of the lights: And glued/blended them to the wingtips using UV-activated clear resin:

Very nicely done! The Thunderstreak looks grand in Luftwaffe colors

Already done! That is a feature of the canopy masks I’m using.

Decaling is complete! After a marathon session this morning, I finished putting decals on my Thud (at least, all that I had the patience for 😁 ). Most went on without any issues, however, I did lose a few (mainly to my own mis-handling). Tomorrow morning I'll remove the film, then I'll be ready to give everything a nice coat of matt varnish. Also, I wasn't quite satisfied with the nosegear lights. This is where I had left things yesterday: Notice that the lights are forward of the black radar reflector. In reality, they should be behind & below the reflector. To achieve this, I cut the lights away from the reflector and glued them directly onto the nose gear fork. This is how they look now: Much better!

Checking my stash, I have Tamiya’s 1/48 Dora, and in 1/72 I have Hasegawa’s A-8 and D-9 versions. But I recently acquired the new 190D-9 by IBG Models (plus a bunch of aftermarket), so that’s the one most likely to get built.

I’m happy that worked out for you!

You could certainly try overspraying as you proposed. I would do that with highly thinned base color — this will givevyou more control over the color.

Thank you. My current worry is how to attach the brass landing gear (made for Monogram’s F-105) to the Trumpeter kit while getting the gear angles right. This is challenging because the plastic in the Trumpeter wing is thin, meaning its attachment points are very shallow.

Well fought, sir! Many of these Dragon kits seem to have an attitude — at least, that’s been my experience.

Nice!

Excellent paintwork, sir. Makes me want to break out and build the kit that’s been in my stash for, like, forever.

More stencils going on (focusing on the rear fuselage at the moment): And, I've made an attempt to improve the nose gear light arrangement: While I was working on that, I realized the brass nose gear is missing a couple of actuators (or maybe they are shock absorbers) on the steering assembly. So, I added a pair made from styrene rod:

One video is worh a thousand words! Two things I found essential, however: a very bright light (to see the film) and sharp tweezers (to lift the film -- I'd worry about using a knife, as shown in the video above).