Painting
The base scheme is quite easy, Dark Sea Grey, that was applied over a primer of Tamiya fine grey. I used Gunze paint for the Dark Sea Grey and over this a gloss varnish of 50/50 Tamiya X-22 and Gunze self-levelling thinner was applied to give a good base for the decals. I used the kit decals and they performed very well, just be aware that for a 1:72nd scale kit there is a surprisingly large number and some of them are very small.
The decals were sealed in with a gloss coat and then it was time to do the detailed metallic painting. These include the engine intakes, wing and tail leading edges, engine exhausts and wheel bay pipework.
For the folded wings inserts have to be inserted into the inner and outer wing sections to hold them together – this works very well and does keep both wings at the same correct angle.
The undercarriage is quite well done and the tyres have flats pre-moulded into them (well the mains do as the font wheel tended not to ‘squash’ down). These fit securely into the bays and the doors fit without any issues.
For the outer wings I didn’t fit the pitot tube and ECM fairings until they were fully decaled and painted up. You can fit weapon pylons to these but if you do remember to open up the holes before you join the wing halves together.
The final part of the build are the ejection seats and the main canopy. The seats were detailed up with eduard’s colour PE for the seat belts and handle details. The main canopy needs a carefully thought out masking sequence to ensure the correct colour is reflected on both the inside and outside of it. The canopy fits well in both the open and closed positions and with this in place that was the model done.
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