Intake issues
Intakes on modern jet aircraft are one of the trickiest areas to work with from a modeling perspective. Tamiya have given us the full length trunking for the engine which is good (from a realism angle) but painful from a modeling angle as we need to sand and paint it all :) Based on a discussion I had with a friend at the latest IPMS meeting (thanks Dave), I decided to try something new to fill the seam inside the intake. What you see here is chopped up sprue, dissolved in styrene glue for 30mins and then used like a filler. Once this mixture dries, you are left with the same plastic as the kit plastic. All we need to do is figure out how to sand it.
Another technique I have picked up from the net previously is to attach a section of wet n dry paper to the end of a toothpick (or bamboo skewer in this case) with some Blu-Tack.
Our makeshift flexi sander can be placed into the intake and used to sand the hard to reach places.
The end result after much sanding and a coat of primer is shown above. Just take it slow and steady and you can get a good result.
The cockpit tub and side walls have received a coat of final color.
