Written by 2:04 pm On the Bench

WIP : Academy 1/72 AH-64E ‘TNI-AD’ Pt.3 – Painting & Finishing

Time to paint and finish this build. I started with my usual black base and white marble coating. As we shall see later, it wasn’t that effective.

The AH-64E fielded by the TNI-AD comes in a 2-tone camouflage of olive drab and green.

The CJM decal sheet states that the olive drab is FS34031. I used Model Color USA Olive Drab for this. As you can see, all the marbling work was covered up by the color. I had some trouble getting the olive drab to be opaque enough but ended up overdoing it. Oh well…

I then masked off the olive drab to prepare for the second color of FS34079 using blutack. I did more marbling on this section to try to bring some of the color variation effects back. The green I used was Model Color US Dark Green.

However, the result looked off. The green was too cold and dark. So after talking to a few friends and posting up the result on the Indonesian Scale Modellers Society (ISMS) Facebook group, CJM’s owner commented that the sheet I had was a ‘version 1’ and the camouflage details had been updated since then. The green is supposed to be FS34095 which I didn’t have. So with eyeball 1.0 I mixed myself a batch using Model Color US Dark Green with some Model Color Deep Yellow and Model Color German Cam Bright Green. I believe it was a ratio of 5:2:1.

I thought that the mix looked too yellow under my desk lamp.

But it looked fine with window light. #Winning.

I then painted the various details like the antennas, main and tail landing gears and then sealed everything with a gloss coat to prepare for decals.

The stencils were from the kit. These were printed by Cartograph and were very thin and nicely printed. However, they folded really easily once off their backing. This led to some frustrating occurrences so I just put on enough of the stencils to make the kit look busy.

The main markings are from CJM, a local producer who makes decals for TNI subjects. The quality is still good and the decals behaved well. The decals are not pre-cut so I had to cut as close as possible to the markings. After a day of curing I gave everything a satin coat.

I thought that I’d go for a more subtle look with the panel wash so I AK Abteilung Starship Filth that was diluted more than usual. It’s very subtle now but seeing that the TNI-AD Apaches are maintained very well, it’s fine. I then attached the main wheels and the two small antennas that protrude out the side of the engine housings. As a finishing coat, I sprayed satin all over.

The last stages of the build involves work on the canopy. First I removed the masking tape and cleaned up any paint that had seeped under the masking tape.

I then painted and carefully attached the two wipers. Note the slightly cloudy look on the canopy: it looks like I didn’t catch a smudge on the inside before installing it. The weapons were then attached.

The absolute last thing to add were the multi-part canopy sill decals, which fortunately fit very well.

Both the main and tail rotors were inserted last and they stayed in place without cement.

This had been a pretty trouble-free build. More importantly, I managed to avoid any last minute disaster. If only all my builds were all like that though

Build Log
Part 1 – Construction | Part 2 – Construction | Part 3 – Painting & Finishing

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