Clouded Leopard SR-71

Another completed work this year.
Kit is Academy 1/72 scale SR-71 Blackbird.
Cheap kit to buy and great top and bottom fit, most of the filling work if you are bothered to do, is at the bottom, so even if you did a bad job, nobody will notice.
It was meant to be my experimental paint exercise. I always had this thing for Grey Ghost/Clouded Leopard camo schemes on aircraft and so I decided to try it on the SR-71 which had a long fuselage to show off the camo scheme.

I enjoyed myself painting the kit, it's an elegant looking aircraft, simple lines with great proportion. I will attempt another camo scheme on the same kit if I can think of a good idea in the future.

Airfix 1/72 Red Arrows Hawk

I thought I'd start off this blog with my 3rd Airfix kit. The new Airfix 1/72 Red Arrows Hawk.
It took me a long time to build it because I was travelling a lot during the build. I finished it in May 2010.
I'm not into accuracy but I think the shape of the kit is spot on.
The fit of the kit was pretty good when we are talking about Airfix standards. I only had some problems with the intake and canopy, the latter being my on fault as I applied too much cement on the canopy while gluing and the front end melted!!. I end up covering the fault with putty and ate up a bit of the front although it was not obvious after it was finished. I used Gunze Mr. Color lacquer paints and polished it with Tamiya polishing compound. I posed it with the canopy open. I added seat belts to the seats using placard.

The Airfix decals were great as they were quite thick. I'm a pretty rough modeller, so the thick decals suited my rough handling. The problem with thick decals is that they are very difficult to cover up. So I ended up layering lots of clear coat on it and polishing it down.
I added a needle as the pitot tube on the nose, unfortunately, I used Tamiya thin cement on the clear nose part and it fogged up.

I really like the overall look of the finished kit, it's interesting enough but not overwhelming in terms of detail.