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RAF QRA through the years. Hurricane finished 24/06, page 9.


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A bit more done over the last couple of days. Cleaned up the seam lines on the fuselage and intakes along with filling in part of the forward cockpit coaming - Eduard provide an etch piece for the HUD in place of the all clear plastic affair in the kit. I also added some wiring, piping and a few bits of scrap etch behind the WSO's instrument panel to make it look a bit busier. It's by no means accurate but adds something to an otherwise bland area (please excuse the dust from the filler in the front cockpit!!):

 

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Fuselage:

 

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Wings were built up, with the lower aux doors being sprayed red:

 

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Once all that was dry, the wings and fuselage found themselves together:

 

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A slight gap was left at the join of the wings and forward fuselage. This struck me as odd as the rest of the wing section fitted and aligned perfectly with the fuselage.

 

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Easy fix with some styrene sheet and filler anyway. Once that is cleaned up there's not much more to the airframe itself, other than the painting the relevant cockpit areas black etc. I've also noticed during my research that the FGR.2 had a periscope fitted for the WSO to see out, as you can see here. This isn't included in the kit so will throw something together using parts from the spares.

 

More soon.

 

Dave

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More done today. After the remaining filler was cleaned up, I sprayed the relevant cockpit areas black after adding the etch HUD and some parts from the Airwaves set (forgot to take a picture of these parts prior to painting.) Once dry, the windshield was added and masked off. I sprayed the last drop of black in the airbrush around some of the areas that had filler to see if any more tidy up was required; none was. The rest of the cockpit was then masked.

 

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I dry brushed some silver over the 'wiring' that I added behind the WSOs instrument panel:

 

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I also made up the periscope from some scrap bits of styrene. It's not overly accurate but will suffice:

 

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Finally, the remaining exposed parts of the canopy were masked up:

 

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I also bought ordered some more paints as I'm now almost fully converted to Laquers for the big paint jobs. MRP does not do a Medium Sea Grey but after researching and getting some great information from @Phone Phixer, it appears that there was very little, if any difference between the colour of the top inner and outer wing - so I plan to spray the entire upper surface in Camouflage(Barley) grey and add just a drop of darker grey when spraying the inner wing portions.

 

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Hoping to get a coat of primer on over the next couple of days aim to make a start on the painting over the weekend.

 

 

Cheers

 

Dave

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Not much of an update but managed to paint the seats this morning:

 

49429554371_25d8357d46_b.jpg

 

There seemed to be a mixture of colours on various ages of seat so I mixed it up a bit and went with faded grey straps and blue for the leg restraints. The detail on the Quickboost pieces is very good indeed.

 

More soon.

 

Dave

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More progress over the weekend. Missiles were all painted, with the aid of more information provided by @Phone Phixer - the Skyflash sprayed with Xtracrylix Light Aircraft Grey and the AIM-9s being sprayed with Light Ghost grey. Decals for the latter are from a Tamiya F-14 kit:

 

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Landing gear, pylons, exhuasts and FOD covers all painted and weathered where necessary:

 

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Onto the airframe then; pre-shading was added and the nose cone sprayed with Tamiya's XF-83 Medium Sea Grey 2:

 

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Just need to mask off the nose cone before spraying on the greys. The fuel tanks and SUU-23/A gun pod were painted and weathered. I wanted the tanks to appear quite grimy so after a wash, some light passes of a mixture of Tamiya smoke with a drop of brown added were done. The gun pod also received some 'soot':

 

49444609208_7668f2c027_b.jpg49445316517_c37648c563_b.jpg

 

The demarcation on the tanks between the Light Aircraft Grey and Camouflage Grey is quite hard to see. These colours were MRP and as usual sprayed beautifully.Hoping to the the painting done on the airframe this week.

 

Aside from the painting, I was looking at the decals. The roundels and fin flashes on the Xtradecal sheet are a bit darker than those provided by Revell:

 

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Could anyone advise as to which of the above would be the correct shade?

 

More soon.

 

Dave

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Dave, the lower left-hand aux air door had steel sheeting over the rear part of the inside to protect it from the starter exhaust. Don’t ask me where that dame from as last time I saw one was in 1989! 

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44 minutes ago, coneheadff said:

I went through all the pics in Patrick Martin's "British Phantoms" book and I think that Revell's decals look much closer to the roundels in the photos.

Thanks Alex, I've been looking at several photos online too and they do resemble the Revell examples more like you say.

 

 

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16 minutes ago, HomerJ_757 said:

Dave, the lower left-hand aux air door had steel sheeting over the rear part of the inside to protect it from the starter exhaust. Don’t ask me where that dame from as last time I saw one was in 1989! 

Thanks mate, I'll try and brush paint some metallic into there, though might be tricky to get to!

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A couple of notes on your work, that is probably too late!

The rear hazard band on the Skyflash should be brown, like on the winders. The old release of this kit had brown decals for them. Hopefully its just the camera picking up an odd shade, and they are more of a brown colour. You mention doing the Tonka F3 sometime, if its the Revell version look out those decals are bright red and very wrong.

The other thing, is the bottom of the inboard pylons should be sanded flat. Those angled protrusions are actually the inboard MWA's (multiple weapons adapters). Used for bolting on the CBTE release units for mud moving weapons. Not fitted for air defence role.

 

Like I say, maybe too late and you say stuff it.

 

Rob.

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17 hours ago, Phone Phixer said:

A couple of notes on your work, that is probably too late!

The rear hazard band on the Skyflash should be brown, like on the winders. The old release of this kit had brown decals for them. Hopefully its just the camera picking up an odd shade, and they are more of a brown colour. You mention doing the Tonka F3 sometime, if its the Revell version look out those decals are bright red and very wrong.

The other thing, is the bottom of the inboard pylons should be sanded flat. Those angled protrusions are actually the inboard MWA's (multiple weapons adapters). Used for bolting on the CBTE release units for mud moving weapons. Not fitted for air defence role.

 

Like I say, maybe too late and you say stuff it.

 

Rob.

Thanks Rob. The bands on the missiles are indeed more red than brown - I'll just have to leave them as they're sealed in with several coats of varnish, plus I don't think I have any suitable brown bands in the decal box! The pylons were an easy fix:

 

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Some oil stains added to the bottom of them.

 

Managed to get that paint on today - I can safely say I am now grey blind! I test sprayed both the Xtracrylix and MRP Camouflage grey and they looked pretty much the same to me so went with the latter. The undersides were given several light coats of Light Aircraft Grey before the top sides were done. After speaking with some ex Phantom folk and looking at various references, it was hard to differentiate between the Camouflage Grey and MSG for the inner wings, given weathering, grime, age and lighting. So,  I added a drop of dark grey to the Camouflage grey for the inner wing sections and gave these areas a light coat.

 

Some panels given a light post shade. Here's the result:

 

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You can see how the angle and light affects the tone of grey in the below pictures:

 

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Once gloss and a wash goes on, the demarcation will be even less noticeable. On another note, I'm not overly sure the Tamiya XF-83 MSG  for the nose is the right shade - it looks a bit dark to me. But going by the below pictures of XV498, perhaps not:

 

https://abpic.co.uk/pictures/view/1574732

 

XV498 Phantom FGR.2 Phantom FGR.2 XV498 "U" 92Sqn.

 

What do you chaps think? 

 

Aside from that, I spent about an hour building up the Flightpath ladder. The individual steps were an absolute delight (he says through gritted teeth) - even my trusty Tamiya Etch bending tweezers struggled to get the folds right!

 

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Should hopefully get the metallic areas around the exhausts painted later this week.

 

More soon.

 

Dave

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The nose cones can come in various colour shadings, that upper photo that you have shown looks almost like an unpainted one. I do however add a touch of brown to the grey that I am using when I paint a Grey Phantom.

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18 minutes ago, Jabba said:

The nose cones can come in various colour shadings, that upper photo that you have shown looks almost like an unpainted one. I do however add a touch of brown to the grey that I am using when I paint a Grey Phantom.

Thanks mate. I think mine is too dark - I've thought about adding a few drops of white the the Tamiya MSG then re-spraying.

 

I hadn't thought of using brown!

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7 hours ago, Phone Phixer said:

Nice work. The greys look fantastic.

I found the MSG I used on my radome, lightened up when sprayed over with Tamiya XF86 flat clear to finish it all off.

Cheers Rob! 
 

I think I’ll re-spray the nose cone with a slightly lightened MSG. Just seems a tad too dark to me as it stands.

 

 

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More done today. All metallic areas were sprayed along with a few details here and there. I wasn't happy with the nose cone so resprayed it with a 75% - 25% mix of MSG and white. Once all that was dry, I brushed on 2 coats of Pledge gloss.

 

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Flightpath ladder was also sprayed and dry brushed with some silver:

 

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Will get the decals on tomorrow.

 

Dave

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I have no idea how you did it, but it’s an absolutely fantastic and fast serial build with always excellent results. Watching with an interest, Dave! 👍 The Spitfire and Lightning looks awesome, amazing painting work.

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28 minutes ago, Nikolay Polyakov said:

I have no idea how you did it, but it’s an absolutely fantastic and fast serial build with always excellent results. Watching with an interest, Dave! 👍 The Spitfire and Lightning looks awesome, amazing painting work.

Thanks Nikolay!

24 minutes ago, coneheadff said:

Great progress, Dave!! The nose looks much better now!

Thanks Alex. I have to agree about the nose cone!

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