Kitty Hawk SEPECAT Jaguar GR-1A, 6 Sqn RAF

I started to apply the Model Alliance decals but after getting a couple on I wasn’t happy with how things were going. There was lots of silvering and registration issues, plus the fin flash angles didn’t match the rudder angles, I assume this is because they are designed for the Airfix kits. Rather than use the kit decals, which didn’t look good I made some masks for the roundels and fin flash using a Silhouette portrait cutter.

First colour on was the red which was Gunze Red with a couple of drops of Tamiya Red Brown.

The blue was Tamiya Royal Blue with a couple of drops of Tamiya Gloss Black.

I ruined the decals for the aircraft number and the saw-tooth stripe on the radar warning antennae on the fin was also badly out of register and so I made masks for these using the Silhouette portrait cutter.

Whilst making the saw-tooth mask I realised Kitty Hawk hadn’t included the position lights on the radar warning antenna. I drilled holes for these and made them later from scrap clear sprue

When I got onto the stencils I struck some more problems. To summarise these:

• The kit decals are out of register, and don’t have accurate stencils
• The Model Alliance decals are for a GR-3, (I knew this before I started but I thought the stencils were correct (mostly they’re not), poor research on my behalf. Plus the few I did use are out of register
• The Airfix GR-3 kit, has as expected, RAF GR-3 decals. However there is also an Ecuadorian option, which are the same as the RAF two tone tactical camo stencils. Again many are out of register, and there is a spelling mistake for the 2 “Rescue” markings on the nose. The Airfix decals are the old matt style ones that look horrible on the sheet.

So to get a decent “rescue” decal, along with a few other stencils I ordered an Xtradecal sheet (No. 48017). Unfortunately when these arrived the words “Rescue” are unreadable and the other ones I wanted, the rack and ejection seat symbols, are just a red and white blob.

At this stage I considered changing to a Gulf War jet in Desert Pink, but after some thought I decided to carry on and just leave off some of the stencils that I considered unusable.

On the model I ended up using the Airfix decals for the rescue markings and correcting the spelling mistake with a fine pen. Most of the stencils are also from the Airfix kit and although many aren’t in register, they are small enough, that, to the naked eye, they look ok.

The large ‘no step’ areas are also from the Airfix sheet. I trimmed the excess carrier film from the first one I applied (on the right flap) but this made application of the decal nearly impossible so I didn’t bother doing this on the other three. Despite their age these decals performed surprisingly well and disappeared under a gloss coat. The 6 Sqn Flying tin opener, “EB” tail codes, and ejection seat markings are from the Model Alliance sheet.

Read on…