DaveJL

Glad to hear it fits better mate! Some areas on this are poor at best. Anyway, I've spent the last couple of days painting the model. The airframe was given a few light coats of MRP Gunship Grey. Sprayed beautifully as always. A lot of reference pictures show the nose being a different shade to the rest of the airframe - being a composite material that is not painted. I went with MRP Extra Dark Sea Grey here as it's not too much of a difference but does show a contrast. Once that was done, details were added across the airframe - Light Ghost Grey for the EW warning system antenna on either side and top of the fuselage just aft of nose along with the GPS dome on the upper fuselage, white for the RWR receivers on the leading edges of the wings and trailing edges of the vertical stabilisers, red & green lights, gun metal vent aft of the cockpit and around the cannon muzzle along with some zinc chromate chipping on the leading edges of wings, pylons, intakes and stabilisers. I also added some aluminium chipping to the IFR door, which appears to be quite a common thing. Finally, I polished it all back with some 12000 micromesh. I'm hoping to get the metallic areas around the exhausts painted then it'll be ready for some gloss. More soon and stay safe Dave

Lovely mate, I think your weathering looks spot on. The Super Bugs on recent cruises seemed to be very heavily weathered. Great work!

Priming and a pre-shade now on. I had to rework the filler at the cockpit join as it looked fairly poor under a squirt of primer. Once it had all dried, I polished it back with a Tamiya 3000 grit sanding sponge. Just want to get this finished now. Turning into a bit of a slog. Will get some grey on during the week. More soon and stay safe Dave

Thanks Dennis. There's certainly plenty to hang, and this isn't even a full load!

A little more done. Fuel tanks were painted and weathered. From my references, these don't seem to get as grubby as the likes of the F/A-18E/F (perhaps the colour affects this) but some pictures have shown a little staining here and there so this was added from a mixture of oils. Some light chipping added to the tip of each tank also. Pylons were finished and I couldn't help but add the SDBs to their mount: Finally, the targeting pods. I resorted to the Afterburner stencil sheet again as GWH don't provide the correct stencils for the AN/AAQ-13 pod: You can also see, just about, some chipping to the upper front part of the AAQ-13 pod - plenty of the pictures in the Reid Air book have shown this sort of weathering to the leading edge so thought it would add a little (ok, a very little!) colour to the all grey of the jet. Exciting stuff . Off to sunny Valencia tomorrow so won't be back at the bench until the weekend when I hope to get the model primed and pre-shaded. More soon and stay safe Dave

Thanks mate! I took a look for that book myself....crazy prices!!

Looks good Paul. The seams at the rear are a pain in the backside, as I'm sure you've found!

An AAC option would be lovely!

Work has been busy so progress has been slow on this one. Only managed to finish the GBUs this week: Forgot how much of a pain those -31s are to paint! Anyway, here's all the ordnance together: Hoping to get the pods and fuel tanks done over the weekend then I'm away to Valencia for a week from early Monday morning so any further progress will be stalled, not that I'm complaining! More soon and stay safe Dave

Cheers mate! Thanks for the info! 972 holds the 3 records point to point as I've listed in the original thread, as you say the altitude and absolute speed record are held by other airframes.

Thanks Dennis, I'll do my best!

Cheers Craig! I actually need to have a good look at the Revell plastic, haven’t really had a chance to look at it in detail! My only memory of building the Testors kit is that a lot of filler was needed! Some nice work going on there Serkan!

Thanks mate, hopefully I can do it justice. I think I still have the old Testors kit I built up in the loft, be an interesting comparison!

Thanks mate, will drop you a PM!

Thanks all! It’s a great book, well worth the investment. I’ll be building it on the ground, plan to order your exhausts to dress it up a bit! Thanks Serkan. I’d looked at adding the Master brass pitot tube so might add that to my cart now! I’m content with the kit details in the other areas, for the moment anyway …saying that are your MLG parts available for purchase?!