Salvadoran Magister (IAI CM-170K Tzukit)

[Ed S]

A brilliant solution.  And those sratchbuilt rockets and pod look really good.

Ed

[Weaver]

Okay, she's pretty much all together. Minor aerials and the aileron & rudder counterweights will be added after painting:



Couple of minor bits of PSR to finish on the underside. The Undercarriage is only pushed on and the doors will go on after painting too, as will the pylons, rocket pods and gun barrels:



Now all it needs is for me to get my act together and finish clearing a suitable painting space in the celllar.....

[Ian the Kiwi Herder]

Excellent realisation - didn't 'get-it' at first, but I'm right with you now !

Ian

[sotoolslinger]

Cool looking AC

[kitnut617]

This is definitely coming together very nicely   

[Brian da Basher]

Weaver, the new 'pit is very well done and the new canopy fits like a glove and really gives your bird a nice "combat ready" look. I can't wait for final roll-out!

Brian da Basher

[John Howling Mouse]

Very believable.

[Weaver]

Cheers folks! 

Started spraying the underside grey today, but it needs more coats and the bloody airbrush just broke.....

[Weaver]

One new airbrush later:



You can't really see it here, but there's a bit of PSR on the bottom of the far engine pod that's poor. However I've decided to leave it and weather it up as a dinged cowling rather than fix it.

[Weaver]

Masked-off bottom half, 2 coats of Hu121 Pale Stone and one coat of varnish:




Under attack from the deadly Salvadorean Blue Mamba:




and after they've built their nests to hibernate:



There's a reason for using blu-tack snakes plus masking tape, rather than just all-blu-tack, which will become apparent in due course.....

[Weaver]

Israeli "peppermint" green:



Started off mixing it according to the instructions on the IPMS Stockholm colour charts: 9 parts Hu90 Beige Green to 1 part Hu31 Slate Grey. Then I decided it was too light, so I put another part of Slate Grey into it. Then I put two coats on and it looked okay. Then when it had dried, I looked at it in natural light and decided it was too dark.... So I put another part of Beige Green in the pot (plenty of left-over paint, luckily) and then remembered that the darker undercoat would make it look darker, so I put another par....STOP LAUGHING AT THE BACK!!!!!!

Anyway, one extra coat of oakey cokey light green and it's JUST RIGHT, OKAY?  (mostly because I'm fed up with it now......)

[Ian the Kiwi Herder]

Great work, keep it coming

Ian

[Weaver]

More masking, to preserve the green areas:

[Weaver]

And then it all went wrong....

I wanted to protect the green from any interaction with the next leyer of blu-tack with a coat of varnish. Unfortunately, the can of Humbrol Matt varnish chose that evening to pack up, as per my thread on the subject. having already established that these cans WILL spray with a different nozzle, I tried one. Unfortunately, it had a much coarser spray than the original one, and drowned the model in varnish.

Then I masked off the green and sprayed the brown, in two thin coats. Looked all right at first, but as it dried, it reacted with the varnish, going whitest where the varnish is thickest. Thinking that it might be possible to paint a thicker coat over it, I let it dry and then brush painted another coat on straight out of the tin. No joy - it's better, but it still went off....







There's no way I can sand it in between those blu-tack snakes, and I havn't got time to strip it and start again, so I've decided to sand the whole plane after the paint is finished to "fade" it, touch the worst of it up with Karismacolour pencils and call it fading/weathering. After all, many Central American jets really do look very second-hand.....

So here it is with the masking taken off the sand and put over the brown. it's now going to get a coat of darker green, which will leave sand-coloured "snakes" at it's borders (hence the snakes-plus-tape masking). The Hu120 green that's recommended as being the earlier Israeli colour is too close to how the "peppermint" came out, so I'm going to darken/richen it a bit.

[John Howling Mouse]

I have this feeling: the uneven surface will magically sand off into a perfect-looking weathered finish.
We'll all end up applauding your ingenuity and, by this time next week, we'll all be stealing your new 'technique'!!!