Magua87

Way back in October of last year I entered the Mustang Single Type Group Building with two Airfix F-51Ds in 1/72. Both aircraft were to be RNZAF/TAF Mustangs from the 1950s. One based from my home city (Auckland) the second from the home of my father's family (Wellington). I managed to finish the first aircraft during the group build, the Auckland based aircraft. I've been plodding along with my Wellington based aircraft ever since and am happy to share it with you all here today. Natural metal is Alclad Airframe Aluminimum over Humbrol gloss black. The level of shine is captured by the underside photo. The wings were filled in, sanded, and painted with decanted Tamiya AS-12. Decals from Ventura. Canopy is Squadron/Falcon and was intended for the Hasegawa kit, which meant it needed a bit of surgery to fit. Very happy with the result.

Progress on the painting. Touch ups of green are all done. The worst of the cracking has been dealt with. We'll see if any of it reappears. I also took the opportunity to better fair in the cockpit windscreen with a bit of putty and painted it green. Tailplanes have been touched up with PRU blue. I've also added some plastic rod to help make a good connection with the fuselage. I snipped off the kit's locating lugs as they were misshapen blobs of plastic. Hope to crack on with the DSG tomorrow. Though I might crack on with painting another kit. We'll see if I can get some masking done tonight.

Horatio, that's pretty brutal. I think most of the cracking on my bird should disappear under a flat coat. Time will tell. I've finished my sanding. I'll crack on with some painting on the weekend.

Ok, team. I've done some testing. Looks like we'll be able to save it with some 2000 grit sandpaper and a bit of a polish with some toothpaste. I think I'll focus on the wings to start with, as they seem to be the worst affected. Worst comes to worst, we'll do some localised respraying. We're back on track!

Right, not sure where to go with this build at the moment. I finished my painting and added a gloss coat. Brush painted kleer. The coat went on fine and the kit has an excellent sheen. However, where the kleer went over the gunze acrylics, they've cracked. No cracking over the Humbrol PRU blue. It's worse in some areas than others. It's particularly prevalent on the starboard wing. You might be able to see it in these photos, too. Hard to capture, but it has spread to all surfaces of gunze, both the Dark Green and DSG. I think it might be time to take the nuclear option and strip all the paint and start again. I've tried over-spraying, but the new paint layers continue to crack. I had a similar issue with gunze's shine red and kleer on my recent Meteor F8. It was minor and only confined to the engine nacelles, so I wasn't too worried. This, however, is all over the top side! I feel like this thread is becoming Duncan's tale of woe! I hope to have some better news to report soon.

Right! We're back to where we started. Tomorrow, gloss coat.

The more the merrier. Hannants' will be happy with my advertising! Steady progress with the repairs. New panel on the port wing. You can see the patch of green with a different sheen. Should disappear under the gloss coat and then the following flat coat. Nose repaired and repainted. This brings us back to the starting point on this thread, a PRU Blue touch up of the nose. Will probably end up a job for next weekend. Looking forward to cracking on with the gloss coat, which I think I'll brush paint this time, and the decals.

First coat of DSG on the nose. Noticed a few depressions that needed to be filled. Dropped a bit of grey paint on the wing! That's been sanded and masked ready for when I lay some green on the nose.

Alright, the nose is back together with some superglue and a bit of sanding. Will need a bit of scribing to reinstate some panels forward of the windscreen and behind the camera port. I'm working on the camera port with some putty and a toothpick. Not sure how I'll fit a new camera lens in there. Although that's a problem for future Duncan. Will be interesting to see how the paint goes down over a half finished gloss coat. I'll try to respray via panels so it will have a more natural look. Four painting sessions coming up: PRU blue, dark green, dark sea grey, and Tamiya's flat aluminium for the front wheel bay.

Been cracking on with the seat this arvo. Looks good with the first test fit. Had to remove the canopy to inspect the damage.

The kit takes a bit of work in a few areas. E.g. the wing to fuselage join was really poor on the underside of the aicraft and required a lot of filing, filling and sanding. There were also some big gaps between the top of the fuse and wings I filled with plastic card, filler, and sanded. I opted for the Xtrakit aircraft as it has finer surface detail than the Airfix kit. Here's the RFI on the Meteor if you're interested. I have had a bit of a set back today. While applying the gloss coat I dropped the kit! Damage is thankfully confined to the nose area. I'll try and slip some card inside the nose to strengthen it before I start putting it back together. Frustrating, but not too hard to rectify! Oh well! This arrived. Will keep me occupied while I'm sanding and painting the nose area.

I found it very inconsistent. I had a bottle of their PRU Blue. It was VERY thick and I struggled to get the right mix of pressure and thinner. I thinned the paint in the bottle with tamiya acrylic thinner. I've been drawing from this mixture and thinning it further for spraying. Good idea to spray it on the thicker side, otherwise it is almost translucent as noted above. You will get the occasional clog. This will be the first and last bottle I'll use.

Next in the queue. Even thought I started that before the Swift.

Today's work. Touching up the PRU blue. You can better see the corrected green and grey scheme here compared to the photo in my first post.

I've been working on this Swift for about a year or year and a half. I'm a serial starter and have too many kits on the go. I've been working to finish a few kits which are in more advanced stages before I crack on with some of my other kits. E.g. the Aeronavale Lancaster which I also have a WIP up for (not forgotten!) Meet the Swift. Here it is a few months ago on the painting pile before I finished my Dutch Meteor F8. More recently I splashed some paint on it. Gunze H330 for the green, H331 for the Dark Sea Grey, and Humbrol Acrylic PRU blue for the undersides. The black frame behind the cockpit is the rear frame of the canopy. I'll be building the aircraft with the canopy open. It was about this stage I took a closer look at my decals and realised Xtrakit had made an error. The aircraft I'd chosen was meant to have silver undersides, not PRU blue. I put out a call on the forum for spare decals from an Airfix kit and @FZ6 came to my rescue with the serials for WK281. I'm very thankful for his help and will be able to keep the PRU blue on the aircraft. This brings us to today. I've been repainting the dark green and dark sea grey so that they better matche the profile on the Airfix sheet. I'll need to strip the tail-planes as the pattern can't be fixed with some modifications. Today's job is to touch up the PRU blue forward of the front landing gear where I've needed to do some sanding. Hoping to turn this around quite fast now. Looking forward to having this in the cabinet next to my Meteors (F8, NF11) and Hunter.

That PE looks brilliant, but tricky as hell!

Thanks, guys. Guess I've got the wrong colour! Doss anyone have a half used airfix sheet I could use? I see their PRU blue aircraft is from 1956. Otherwise I'll see if I can get one from their spares team. I'm quite keen on the PRU blue undersides.

Hi, all. I've been working on an Xtrakit Swift, WK 293/N. Xtrakit show this aircraft as standard DSG and dark green over a PRU blue underside (see here). I came to mask the nose black, but came across a few photos of the aircraft, all without the black on the nose around the camera. More annoyingly, all these photos show the aircraft with a silver underside, rather than the PRU blue prescribed by Xtrakit. Here and the same picture with an illustration here. I also note that CMR believe this aircraft had a silver underside. The rivet counter in me is working over time. I thought maybe I'd build the other aircraft XD 962, but a quick google seems to show that this was also painted silver. Is anyone able to confirm one way or the other for WK 293/N and XD 962/L before I have to consider a repaint or finding some new lettering? Any help appreciated.

Thanks, everyone. Stevehnz, figured a aerobatic display aircraft would be pretty clean! Here you go. Revell Hunter.

Hi, team. I've just put the finishing touches on my Airfix (MPM re-pop) Gloster Meteor F8. This kit started life as a Belgian aircraft, but that turned to custard when I reached the decaling stage. The Airfix decals were thick and out of register. I decided to sand off the Airfix decals and ordered some new ones from Xtrakit. This turned into a full strip of the aircraft to remove any rough patches and to tidy up some scribing errors. I moved away from my Citadel paint (which is actually quite nice) and gave Tamiya AS-12 a go as I'd heard good things. The red is Gunze H23 Shine Red. I've got boxes full of British jets, so I was keen to add some colour to the collection so that I don't end up with a cabinet of green and grey. Very happy with the final outcome.

What did you use for the PRU blue?

After a bit of head scratching I decided the sheen looked too great for my chosen Auckland squadron aircraft. NZ2419 seemed an obvious choice, especially given the high sheen in the image below. My dad's side of the family is from Wellington, so that works out well with one aircraft from Auckland and one from Wellington. Another coat of future tomorrow to seal in the decals. I realised that I don't have enough roundels to finish the kit, so I've ordered some more from Ventura for the underside of the wings. The Ventura decals have been great, but I'm not enamored with the Airfix stencils. The data panel is the only decal to silver or stand out from the natural metal. I'm hoping it blends in a bit with tomorrow's coat of future. Once the Future's dry I'll add the different shade around the exhaust and paint the matte anti-glare panel.

I'm back! Reapplied the lacquer to the wings and got a result I was happy with. Had a bit of a disaster with the Humbrol gloss black (disaster modelling, a theme?). I managed to sand back a failed coat and polish up a less than perfect coat with a cloth into something reasonable. Applied some Alclad Polished Aluminium tonight and have just removed the masking tape. Looking pretty good! Will touch up the lacquer by hand in a few places tomorrow, then I think I'll apply a coat of future over the whole airframe. I'm not worried about losing some of the shine in the Alclad, in fact I need to tone it down a bit before I start weathering.

Hi, team. I know the topic of aircraft colours has been done to death. However, I haven't been able to find anyone's comments on the Cybermodeller guides. Specifically, their guide on the Spitfire Mk IX in RAF camouflage. I'm a big fan of acrylics as I spray indoors in an apartment. I was wondering if anyone has tried the combination of colours recommended below. I'm especially interested in the concept of scale fade and Hyperscale's recommendations for 1/72 scale aircraft (see 15% scale fade below). I've been tempted to whip up a few varieties of the same kit and paint them in the various shades below for a comparison, but I'm a pretty slow builder so I thought I'd see if anyone else has already done it! Edit: the table below I've compiled from a few of the Cybermodeller guides. The colours in the Spitfire guide refer to Dark Green, Ocean Grey, and Medium Sea Grey. H = gunze XF = tamiya acrylics AS = tamiya rattle can Cybermodeller Cybermodeller 10% scale fade Cybermodeller 15% scale fade Dark Green XF58, H78 XF65, H405 AS30 Ocean Grey XF82 H337 H306 Medium Sea Grey H306 H308 Dark Sea Grey XF77, H69 XF75, H305 H75 Extra Dark Sea Grey H333 H331 H305 Sky Vallejo 70.885 Vallejo 70.885 Vallejo 70.103

Hi, Paul. I think you've snapped a photo of the wrong set of wings. The Eduard F Mk IX should have the large canon blister on the wing. Looks like a late wing in your post.