After some black preshading to simulate the puttied panels, I sprayed the AK RLM 76 Version 2. Went on beautifully but is lighter in colour than I'm used to. Not too fussed about that given the vagaries of of late war applications.
Freehanded the upper camo and gloss coated it all. Wings and tail are not glued yet - fit is incredible. I've applied colour corrections to these pics to remove red hues but the colours still appear different than in real life.
The engine fit is now much better after all the fiddling that I did. I'll need to apply a little bit of 81 to the inside of the hinge to hide it even more.
Not yet 100% happy with the gloss coat and there's a spot where some thinner splashed onto the surface that will need to be touched up so it will be a while before the decals get stuck on. The nose rings should be a joy....
Decals have started and this post will deal with the red/white/black nose cap and rings. The kit provides a white and black ring decal and it's left up to the builder to paint the red cap. Not knowing how transparent the white ring would be, I wanted to paint the cap so that none of the red encroached under the white ring. To do that, I first traced the shape of the ring decal onto the protective paper included in the kit:
The paper was then taped over a piece of masking tape like so:
The shape was then cut through the masking tape to give me a masking ring the same size as the decal.
This was then applied to the model and was now ready to paint the nose red.
After gloss coating the red and waiting a day, the kit white/black ring decal was applied:
Turned out decent I'd say. Thanks for continuing to follow this.
Looks great as usual, Andy, your attention to detail at work as usual. At least it doesn't look like the IWM's example, which that shade of green makes it look like a big wooden model.