OlCabour's Hangar

I redone here or there the shading along some lines (which had disappeared during the hair lacquer operation) . It is made with highly diluted gray panzer XF63.
I also shaded a little the white decals that brought out too much.

Dirt streaks are made with dark gray oil paint, enhanced with black in the center of the impacts.
I think it cannot be well see in the pictures, but as soon as there is almost no paint on the brush, I tapped the surface randomly, to add some more texture to this beast.

All this is sealed under a layer of matt varnish.

The pilot is painted like the mk 2 one (they have been made at the same time).
So the combination is green Xf73 Tamiya dark green,

the folds with a darker green,

and a veil of Alclad pale gold.

It is conventionally finished with brush paints.

The chair is in a dark gray (near black). He then received a black tamiya and brown wahes to give it a leather look.

The base is built in the same way as the mk2.

The character and the canopy held in place without any glue.

Painting typically starts with a coat of tamiya spray primer.

Followed by a black pre-shading of the panel lines.

On this build, I will tried for the first time the hair lacquer trick. Indeed, the blue paint is heavily peeling on the Apollo Viper.
The gray base coat is Sky Gray xf19

Followed by a very very thin coat of Alclad aluminum, just to give it a very slight metallic look.

Everything is sealed with Klir/Future

Then a matte coat. Followed few hours later by 3 coats of a first price hair lacquer spray

The blue, a mixture of light blue, flat white and intermediate bleu (all from tamiya) did not satified me once applied.

So I replaced the intermediate blue with a tamiya flat blue, with a better result. I took benefit of this error to not applied uniformly the new blue mixture : Since it is darker, I applied it along the strucutres and panel lines, like a postshading.

I let it dry just the time to clean the airbrush.
I apply a some warm water, wait a few seconds and I rub with an strong hair paintbrush.
It does not come off as easily as I thought. In places, it is necessary to rub hard ( maybe it's because I did several coats of paint ? or not enough hair lacquer ?) .

I tried to follow the best I could the 3D model, here's the result.

In places, the lacquer has created some halos, they fade a little wiping a brush with water (it certainly has spread it in fact... !).
I did not try to rub them away completely as they will had another weathered effect to this worn Viper.

I'll let it all dry for several days before applying a matt coat.

The two half of the cabins are finally glued. The seam is rather loose and leaves a gap of more than 1 mm. The gluing will be made in strength, which requires a very large dose of glue, some clamps. I let this dry as is for several days without trying to start sanding the seam.

Meanwhile, the guns are prepared and drilled.

On the engines, the seams are sanded. Again, there are molding marks and shrinkages.

The design of the kit does not allow the engine module to be glue only at end of the assembly (after painting). So at this stage, they must be painted, glued in the cabin and protected for further assembling works.
They therefore received a coat of primer and black satin (spray cans).
As the surface still did not satisfying me (sanding marks this time), they are sanded again.

Then again primer + black satin paint.

It is covered with Alclad Steel.

The petals are highlighted with Aclad Jet Exhaust.

Then burning marks of the metal are made with transversal lines of Alclad Copper.

Followed by lighter ones in Tamiya clear blue.

The guns were painted at the same time.

The cockpit is finally installed, the bonding is done with cyano glue, reinforced by a mixture of resin dust/particles and cyano.
Sorry, no photos of this. However, here it is installed and lighted

The inside of the cabin and the cockpit walls are painted with black to prevent light leakages.

After some dry lighting tests , I found that there is not enough light in the armrests, except just above the LED, where it is too strong. So I enlarged the openings for the LED, and painted flat white inside the armrests.

Diffusion is much better, more uniform (even if it is not as apparent in the photo, due to the camera sensibility). To save space, the LEDs are arranged laterally instead of perpendicularly, and a white box is then built around (again for diffusion, but also to prevent light leakages) These LED must have the lip sanded on one side so that it fits properly in the white box.

The LED behind the dashboard is permanently installed. It is set in a cap (a button from an old calculator or toy) .