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Showing results for tags 'Ancient!'.
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Hello all. In a fit of nostalgia a couple of weeks ago, I ordered from KingKit a couple of Airfix Lightnings. Not the excellent F.6 and F.2A, but the rather old F.1A and F.3. I have built these many time in the past, when the world was different and my view of it more so. I have recently built a Sword Lightning F.1 with markings by Model Alliance. I had found the markings pretty good, except they silvered and were highly translucent. I wanted a cheap model which was not too important in my great scheme of things, and I wanted to try an alternative way of adding the transfers. This fitted the bill! This is what I ended up with, and I accept it is not to the high standards usually associated with Lightning (or anything else) builds on here, but is was a good learning curve! I tried a few new things on this, but the first thing was to remember that this was a 'snap-fit' kit! Well named - the location aids were all too big, and if I had used enough force, it would have been a definite snap! I tried to represent the various metal panel tones, I painted matt black and dark grey on various panels, then brush-painted Revell 90 Silver acrylic overall. It was just translucent enough to show the panels in the right light - not too 'in your face'. I also had some fun masking for the red spine and tail, the triangles forward were interesting to say the least, but I had some Sword markings for 111 Squadron which acted as a photo-copied template for the masking and that helped. The unit markings were Model Alliance, and this time, rather than using Micro Set and Sol, I used the new Pledge/Klear stuff, and that settled them down much better than the previous attempt. You can see how thin and see-through they are though with the St George cross badge on the tail. I know I got quite a few things wrong with this - the rake of the main undercarriage looks too severe forward to me, and the fin flashes should not have a yellow surround, but I was quite happy with the final result. Thanks for looking, all the best. Ray