Decals
This is always an exciting part of any project as the model comes to life. The decals, in the main are okay – they went down fine with Mr Mark Setter and Softer. Before adding them though I gave the model a generous spraying of Kcolor Clear Coat X100 Super Gloss. I love this stuff, sprays beautifully and doesn’t need thinning and also dries quickly. The only real problem I had with the kit decals were the tiny and very thin red wing walkway lines that just broke up and I left them off. The blue/white checkerboard around the rear fuselage just doesn’t fit as you can see in these photos. It just seemed the wrong contour to fit around the complex forward lower edge of the fin so I joined it at the bottom and let everything settle down with the decal setting solutions. The cracks in the white sections you can see are removed (masked) by letting everything dry thoroughly first. After that I just masked the ‘good’ areas using small pieces of low-tack Post-It notes cut into small pieces and small bits of Tamiya tape to secure everything while I carefully sprayed Tamiya Flat White. It all came out fine to my eye, so that’s a relief!
The swastika on the fin isn’t provided and so I raided my spares box of a couple of these in 1:72 scale.
TIP: Remember to spray more gloss varnish over your decals after they have been applied and are fully dry – this will get rid of the naturally flat finish of the Airfix decals and help them to blend into the painted surface. When all is dry you can add whatever flat or other varnish you want to create the final finish effect.
Yellow nose
Tamiya XF-3 Flat yellow completes the main spraying.
Wheel bays and undercarriage
I masked and sprayed these with Alclad2 Steel.
The undercarriage assemblies go together well and are nicely detailed – well, mostly. One thing that is a bit annoying is that Airfix has omitted the ‘V’ shaped scissor links on each of the main undercarriage legs. I can’t find any PE spares and so I have scratched some simple representations from fuse wire to finish off these items.
Flat varnish…
The Me262 really needs quite a flat finish in my view and so the Kcolors Military Flat is great for this – it also brings the tone of that upper camo more into line with how I think it should look.