Thanks guys. After reading up on the salt technique, this will need to be done after the decals are on so the next steps will be to add the black wing walk lines, do the worn fuselage stripes and then gloss coat. Back with more when I get there.
A couple of other things were tackled today before I can gloss coat. First off, a close look at the windscreen revealed a not-so-great fit. Getting good seams on my clear parts is the biggest area that I need to improve and I still have a way to go.
After scraping away the ridge and doing a bit of filling with PVA, I now have a better fit but it's still far from perfect.
Moving over to the fuselage stripes, recall the area of heavily worn/washed stripes toward the bottom discussed earlier. I'm now of the opinion that this distinctive feature was due to a half-assed attempt at cleaning off the paint as you can see one area where there is a circular swish of black paint on the white. Anyway, I replicated this by masking above the stripes and applying thin swishes of Dark Green and black paint.
Here's the finished effect along with a glimpse of the real thing:
I think I've already said that I won't finish this model for the GB deadline and that's obviously still true. That said, I'll continue with this thread until I finish the model if it's okay with y'all. Thanks for following along.
I noticed the other day that the yellow recognition stripes turned out cock-eyed with the ones on the starboard wing being thinner than the other.
This needed to be fixed before gloss coating so I masked the area again to make it thicker. The mask on the port side is to fix a portion of the line that wasn't straight.
Masks removed and things are looking up.
With that done and the Dark Green patch near the Sky band adjusted, I went ahead and applied a gloss coat. I've decided to apply the black wing walk patches after the matte coat as I want these to be dead flat.
Thanks again. Decals started. Had to decide between the larger 50 inch vs. 45 inch upper wing roundels supplied with the Aviaelogy set and based on the very sketchy photo of Pulverizer II from the distant right side, I went with the larger ones.