Weathering
You will all have your preferred choices of weathering and it’s not for me or anyone for that matter to dictate what is best. The one that works for me best on a NMF finish is pastels. I have read long diatribes about how this doesn’t work on NMF and that the ONLY way is a wash……poppycock I say. My B-25 and F-100 both in NMF were each weathered entirely with pastels and the word is that they look ok.
I used ground mixed grey pastel dust in a small tray and with a chisel ended brush, work the pastels into all the detail across the entire airframe. I blow away any residue and with a small cut down almost to nothing, Size-1 brush, grind the dust into the panel lines and rivets. With this done I then give the whole model another coat of Aqua-Gloss to seal all that weathering in. This has the added effect of creating some shading as the dust dissolves into the surface.
Again it is quite hard to see in the photographs but I hope that you can at least see the impact of using this method. I think it works very well and gives a natural patina to the NMF rather than a wash which can look unnatural. I also think that uniquely this method enhances further the stressed skin look I created earlier with the base coat.
Decals
The decals in the kit I cannot comment on as they weren’t used. I have to say that a single scheme option and without any stencils is a very poor value proposition on a £250 kit! The scheme is a great one being the sister ship of ‘A Bit O Lace’ but frankly it ought to be better than this.
I used the Kits World decals for ‘A Bit O Lace’ and these are good. They are in register have little carrier film and react well with Micro Set/Sol. I think that Kit World Instructions are a little vague and this especially so with the stencil data much of which is not even mentioned in the instructions! At £25.00 for both sets they are not cheap and I think the instructions are shoddy.