Thank-you guys. I've been plugging away at this model since the last update. Obviously, the decals were the next stage and I'm not at all impressed with the Dragon offerings.
Let's start with an overall view of the general decals as they went on. The 305 on the nose, red 8, and wing crosses are from the kit as I had no spares of these. The black fuselage crosses are spare Eduard ones.
The white outline on the red 8 is too thick and is off register.
I touched the 8's up very carefully with a fine brush using the background mottle colours and, after applying a dull coat, here's how they turned out:
As there were no swastikas in the kit, I once again had to raid the spares, of which I have many. The problem was, I didn't have any of the late night fighter hatched types so I needed to do some fine scalpel work.
I started with these spare Eduard swastikas which came in two pieces.
After carefully cutting out thin black sections in the right places, I placed the decals and applied them. Here's how it turned out with flat coat applied.
The model has now had all decals applied and is flat coated. Most of the stencils and the wing walk lines are from the spares box. As you can see, I also got the landing gear on and validated my fishing weight estimate. I'm not 100% happy with the flat coat as it got a bit dusty so I may redo it
The drop tanks got the harispray over aluminum chipping technique:
The vinyl tires are often criticized but I went ahead and used them. After priming them. I painted them with Tamiya acrylics and they don't look too bad. No way that I'll be able to do my usual flattening treatment though. In these pics, the actuators and remaining gear doors have not yet been installed.
Here's an overall shot of the underside so far. All decals here are from the kit.
That's it for now. Thanks for checking in.