**** DONE: GB-35 1/72 A-4B Skyhawk - Vietnam French/American War 1950-1975

Very nice Andy

Looks great Andy, and now that I've seen it with a lighter shade, I agree that it's a better mix.

Nothing wrong with that....

Finally get some decent internet. Learned some things during the last 2 pages. Great that you got the paint solved to your liking. This might just be my laptops colours, but if you go back to page 3, your primer looks to be almost the correct colour. I've got on old bottle of Polly Scale Light Gull Grey and it is a very close to your final shade

Depends what you call light full grey. FS *6440 is browner than the primer i used at least on the fan that I have but I can see your point.

Thanks everyone. If anyone can verify the right FS number for the period Light Full Grey please chime in.

USN scheme - FS.595-26440 Light Gull Grey and lower FS27875 White

Thanks Wojtek, That's what my references said too, though I had also read that the semi gloss finish started in 1970 and that a flat finish was used prior to that - so 36440 pre 1970. At any rate, here are two pics showing the current finish against the FS26440 colour chip, keeping in mind that I have lightened my finish to compensate for scale. The chip is above the number on the colour fan and the first pic is under artificial light and the second is in direct sun. I'm pretty happy with the result.

According to my notes the equivalent should be the Humbrol 129 as the paint ANA620. Judging by your pic I would say you are quite close to the tone. Oh.. maybe a little bit too light.

Looks great so far Andy!

Yep, that looks better, especially in the natural light. Appropriately lightened for scale effect I would say.

what is the colour number on the fan above 26492, because its that sample, in my opinion from those you've shown that your model now matches.

FWIW I think your colour selection is fine. more than fine, its terrific.

Thanks guys. Wojtek, the colour was intentionally lightened to account for scale. My original mix was very close to the fan chip but was way too dark when displayed on this tiny model (see post #57). Michael, that colour chip is 26492. The numbers are below the colour chip. Thanks to you and Kirby for the nod on the colour.

Today, I spent a few hours on the decals. Though they are nicely printed and work well with setting solution (good thing!) there are some fundamental flaws with the design of the decals that I'll describe below. Let's start with the danger warning strip on the front of the intake duct. As you can see, the red stripe, which is to run along the leading edge of the intake, is printed straight. That would be great if I was building a Tomcat or Valkyrie but unfortunately the Skyhawk's duct is elliptical and tapered so the stripe should be curved.



So here's what happens when you try to make it conform to the edge. Here I've roughly applied the decal and it is still adjustable. What I had to do was cut slits in the front edge of the decal to enable it to make it around the bend. The second issue is that the damned thing is too short and doesn't make it all the way to the top of the duct. That's pretty sloppy if you ask me.




Here a few more decals have been installed and work continues on the warning strip. Fortunately, the decal for the strip on the inner edge is printed too long so I was able to cut a piece off of that and add it to the outer strip to complete the coverage all the way around (yes, 2 wrongs do make a right). Copious amounts of Solvaset were needed to get the strip to behave. There is one wrinkle that won't go away now but this will be easily fixed.




There is still touch up to do on the leading edge with red paint to blend in the inner and outer strip per the museum piece below and I think that things should look fine once this is done. Had it not worked out, I would have masked and painted the strip and cut the danger wedge and used only that part. Note also that the "12" in front of the insignia had the 5 cut off. The museum piece has the full "512" number there but a period photo I found on the net of this same aircraft had the 5 removed. In the end, I decided to add the 5 back on as I didn't want to mess with the decal on the other side.





The decals on the tail went on well, except that the little 12 on the top of the fin deformed as it moved when I applied the decal setting solution. I will replace this one with others in my stash as the numbers are a bit too small anyway.



I was worried that I was going to have a mess on my hands with the insignia decal having to go over the vortex generators but 4 applications of solvaset and small cuts with my scalpel help the decal conform nicely.



More fun to post soon....

Looking good

Like it !

Thanks again my friends. Nice of you to be following along.

Work continues on the decals and currently they have all been applied and sealed with Future. To begin with, the little 12's on the fin were removed and replaced with new ones. Not quite the right script style but close enough for me.





Here's another area where Airfix kind of dropped the ball on the decals. The insignia on the starboard side is supposed to curl all the way around the refueling probe fairing and continue below it so that, when seen form straight on, it looks like the full insignia. However, the decal design doesn't account for the extra distance that it needs to cover to go around the fairing so I remedied this by cutting the decal and applying the lower piece to the correct position.


The gap between the decals was then carefully filled in by hand with a fine brush and paints mixed to the correct hue. In the pic below, the insignia has been completed and you can also see the touched up intake warning strip. The little red blobs on the top and bottom are intentional as they appeared on all of the aircraft in period reference pics I've looked at.



Here's the other side with the red touch up completed. Note the excellent fit of the canopy parts - kudos Airfix!



From kudos to raspberries, yet another decal issue is the anti glare panel. Though I would normally paint this area in 1/48, I though I'd try the decal provided in order to save time and effort but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get the thing to sit properly on the curved nose so I gave up and put the decal back on the paper.


Plan B was to get back to the idea of painting the anti-glare panel so for this I applied the decal onto some masking tape and used it as a template to cut the pattern out with a scalpel. For this a steady hand is vital and a french curve is handy.





My plan for today, if I have time, is to apply the mask after carefully covering the decals with post-it notes and paint the panel. In the meantime, while the decal seal coat was curing, I continued work on the undercarriage and below you can see that they are pretty much ready to install. The white gear legs and door internals have been given a wash to bring out the details and the edges of the doors have been given a red trim using a Sharpie pen.




That's it for now. Thanks again for following and for your valued comments.

It's really looking sharp now Andy. And I can appreciate your thoughts re Airfix decals - not the best around !

Ive never built a 1/72 airfix kit. do they have generically poor decals? looking forward to that (not).......