Jobbie

The F-35 colours are: Overall- FS36170 “Camouflage gray” / SMS Have Glass grey PL69 Markings- FS36231 “Gray int’l / AC Gray #23” / SMS Dark Gull Grey PL118 Interior- FS36375 “Medium gray” / SMS US Medium grey PL120 Obviously add white to the list for the weapon bays, etc. I have the advantage of being able to walk over to the paint locker and having a look for myself; The paint shades utilised are not secret, but the composition, additives, NSN’s and part numbers of the coatings certainly are. The various methods employed to mask over panel gaps and such-forth start life as FS36170, but can change over time due to the different materials utilised, ambient temperature, time of day and all that. The paint patches forward of and behind the intakes are the same shade, but have different additives in the paint for…”reasons”, so they look a tad darker. In short- There are many, many different photos of F-35’s on the internet. Paint your model however makes you happy.

Thanks for the comments. What's the normal protocol now? Do I rename this build as completed? Move it somewhere? I'm not sure what's expected.

I rather enjoyed this build. I'm glad I was part of it. Happy 50th birthday, Matchbox.

Handley Page Victor XH672 first flew in 1960 as a B.2 bomber, was the last Victor converted to a K.2 tanker in 1978, was the lead aircraft for the Falklands Black Buck raid in 1982, flew in Black Buck 2 and 3-4, flew the highest number of refuelling missions in the first Gulf War in 1991 (52), and was the last V-bomber to be retired in 1993. She's preserved at the RAF Museum at Cosford, now painted in desert hemp and is known by the name she aquired in the Gulf War - "Maid Marian".

And there we are! I'm calling her completed. I added couple of antenna cut from plastic card, and re-made the towel-rail antenna from stock. The towel-rail still look a tad large, but better than the kit-supplied one. (Oh! I just noticed I hadn't removed the maskol from the aft crew observation windows at this point.)

The only decals I used from the Matchbox decal sheet were the walkway stencils over the wing-root. They're the only ones I had as I want to use the Airfix ones for that build, sometime later. Note the (quite small) brass pitot probes and aluminium refuel receptacle. I like them a lot. Much better than the kit-supplied ones. I used AK Panel-liners to mark along-side the raised panel-lines. I rubbed them back with a slightly thinner-damped cotton-bud after a few hours. Note the terrible silvering under the serials on the empennage. My bad.

Lower formation stripes completed. The pods are missing lots of detail, but that's a combination of a forty year-old kit and after-market ones printed in the wrong colour. I look forward to building the Airfix kit. The lack of all detail in the wheel wells is...understandable. But I figure it's not worth spending the time on this one. It sits so close to the ground, anyway.

I spent a full day contemplating which squadron I was going to reproduce. I now had the original Matchbox decals, a sheet of Xtradecal Victor Collection (X72256) and PrintScale HP Victor (PSL72187) and the decals with the new Airfix kit (A12008). I was building for a Facebook "British Aviation In Scale" #Falklands40 group build, so it had to be an aircraft which took part in the Black Buck raid. I also had to choose which aircraft serial I was going to make with the Airfix build later. I still can't decide between an anti-flash white Blue Steel aircraft or a camouflage one, but I figured if I didn't use a serial starting with "XL" fir this build, I could have more flexibility for the later build. So I looked up which aircraft were assigned to 57SQN that had a serial that didn't begin with the letters "XL"... I settled on "XH672". You could say that I experienced an existential Victor stencil crisis. Haha.

Fluorescent Orange (SMS PL46), mixed with white for a first coat, then more orange for the second. Less white as I moved away from the "sun", as it were. I realised the next day that I accidentally reversed the long stripes under the fuselage. I was just going to leave it, but found...I just couldn't. I re-sprayed it the day after.

The original decals that came with the kit work, but they're very cloudy and generally look stuffed. So I purchased a replacement set from PrintScale; part # PSL72187. I was even less happy with them. All the underside stripes are red rather than fluorescent orange. So I decided to use both sets as a marking template to paint the stripes myself. It all went rather well, actually. I started by diluting the orange with a few drops of white to "sun-fade" the stripes...particularly the over-wing ones.

Camouflage time. I used SMS paint that conforms to: BS641 / FS34079 - Forest Green (SMS PL77) BS637 / FS36440 - Medium Sea Grey (SMS PL108) White undersides - (SMS PL02). This photo was taken before I went back and cleaned up some edges I wasn't happy with. I am, however, very happy with the colours. I generally use SMS lacquer paints when I can for exteriors and Vallejo Model Air acrylics for interiors.

All together, ready for primer.

The windscreen wasn't a bad fit, but I wasn't great either. Mind you, it was a better fit than the crew entrance door and airbrake. I cut my own masks. I sliced off the refuelling receptacle because I bought a MasterModel turned aluminium replacement with two turned brass wingtip probes. (Personally, I don't think they're pitot probes out there on the wingtips. They're too far away from the instruments they'd supply a reference to. I reckon they're HF antennas all the way out there. Can anyone confirm this? You can kinda see the card I placed on the inside edge of the intake duct in this photo.

The difference between the Matchbox surface detail and the Airfix surface detail...