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

The decal performance is fine Michael. It's the design of the shapes in the particular instances noted above that lacked adequate thought. I can't vouch for other 1/72 Airfix kits as this is the only one I've ever tried.

Thanks again for looking in guys. Today, I had more time than I had thought I would to move the project forward so I took advantage of that. Here I masked the area for the anti-glare panel




...and how it looked after I removed the masks. I didn't realize that I used gloss black for the panel until after I sprayed but it doesn't matter as the model will be matte coated anyway. In the pic below, I had already run some wash over the seams but have not removed the excess as yet.



Here are two other views of the model after receiving the panel wash and before removal of the excess.




With the excess wash removed with a damp cloth, I then glued on the refuellng probe in preparation for the matte clear coat.



One last inspection was done and a few tiny spots were touched up with grey in my airbrush before switching over to the final clear coat. I decided to keep it fairly flat for this model though I understand the actual paint was a semi gloss. I think for such a small model, the flat will look better so that's what I did. Below is an overall shot of the model with the flat coat on and the canopy mask removed, There was some turbulence when I sprayed the bottom and some of the flat coat pooled in the red area where the slat goes. I'll need to fix that.



Here's a close-up of the starboard wing with the flat coat on.



And of course, removal of the canopy masks revealed some dust particles on the inside of the clear part. Ain't that always the way? Where do these things come from!!!!???? I will also need do a little tweaking of the anti-glare panel demarcation line at the canopy pillars


Next it will be on to the fiddly bits and application of final weathering. Thanks again for following the build guys. I appreciate it.

That's looking really nice Andy. And I'm sure nobody will notice the specs inside the canopy unless they look really, really hard!

I agree.

Done good there Andy, especially on those Intake decals.....

Great stuff.

Cheers fellas. Should get a bit more done today.

well the way you managed those decal issues was very impressive Andy. There were many highlights, but I was impressed in how you tackled the anti glare application. Making the edges of the masking template so precise cannot have been easy and solving the intakes issue really was exceptionally good

Great work so far Andy!

Thanks again gents. My diary for today:

The tail hook was up next and this required a number of black stripes to be applied. I've never been successful doing this freehand so this time I tried something different. The length to be striped section was 21.5 mm and according to the instruction sheet I counted 13 stripe segments. My public school math said each segment would therefore be 1.65 mm wide so I took out my cheap vernier and cut slots into a piece of tape at the required increments like gills on a shark. I did not cut through the full width of the tape and you'll see why in a minute.




The tape was then wrapped around the hook. Keeping the tape as one piece allowed this to be done in one step and kept all the mask segments in the right place.



The segments to be painted black were then removed after cutting the tape width to reveal the slits.



The black was then painted on with my airbrush and the result is acceptable though not perfect. At this small scale it does the job (remember the striped segment is just 21 mm long or 3/4 inches).




Jumping ahead, I installed the undercarriage this morning and allowed the glue to set before standing the model up on the gear. Here I have masked the tail pipe and refueling probe tip to receive a shot of Alclad Steel.




Here the tip of the probe has been revealed and a rather clumsy paint job of the tip of the nose has been done freehand as this was too much of a conical shape to mask easily. Once fully dry I will smooth the nose out a bit with fine sand paper.

On a positive note, I gave the canopy a good rap with my finger nail and the bits of dust that had adhered on the inside fell off. Yippee!




Here's the tail pipe with the masks removed as well as the finished tail hook. The latter has a very small pin that supports the hook end on the fuselage but this has sprung away and I will need to reattach it. The plastic on this kit is quite soft so the hook is quite springy and easily bent so be careful if you build this kit. I actually had broken the shaft but managed to repair it before the stripes were applied.




The slats have now been added at his stage as they would have easily been knocked off earlier. Despite that, I did manage to break off one of the moulded-in supports so had to reattach it with the slat.





Whilst attaching the slats, I had a leak of CA glue on my desk so rather than panic and wipe it off right away, I decided to use the pool of glue to attach the dear doors, drop tank, and ordnance, something I wasn't going to do until tomorrow. The bomb was painted XF-58 and the yellow ring on the nose was done by hand and the tip was dipped in silver paint. I see now looking at this photo that I have a bit of red mist on the front of the pylon that I'll need to fix. Note the flattened tire.



Very close to finishing now guys so all going well, I should be able to post my finished pics tomorrow.

Great job on the anti-glare and all the little bits, especially in this scale

That is brilliant. I need to get one of those Vernier thingys just so I can do the stripes like that.

damn good Andy...!

Looking nice Andy, cool method for the stripes!

Very nice work Andy, and I especially like the approach to painting the tail hook stripes.

Thanks again gents. Really appreciate you stopping by for a peek.

I installed the final fiddly bits, did a bit of weathering (seems Navy aircraft were kept fairly clean) and did some touch up painting. I started by re-installing the tiny pitot tube in front of the windscreen. This moulded in piece didn't survive the handling during the build and I was lucky to find it after it had broken off. The below pic also shows the cannon that has been painted and installed along with the unique smoke stains by the muzzle.


The small nav light lens was painted gloss red and stains were applied in the exits of some of the exhaust openings.



The completed underside showing red and green lenses added to the extensions behind the main undercarriage. The slat actuators have also been painted in a steel colour as I was not sure what they should have been so went this route.






The other side of the forward fuselage shows the port cannon and its smoke stains as well as some fasteners that I drew on some panels with a sharp pencil.





Here's the aft section showing some staining I applied toward the back. I think one thing that I will do is add some wear on the fin where the elevator and its fairing deflect.





With that, I will leave the model for a bit and do a final once-over before declaring success. Thanks all.

I like it Andy

Looking very nice.

Looks great so far Andy!

I really like the look of that.