With the landing gear settled, I went ahead to paint the small details and wingtip lights with a paint brush.
A section of the starboard side of the tail is unpainted. I masked this off and (ironically) painted it the same color as the exhaust.
During this time, the owner of Cap Jempol Metal (CJM), a local decal manufacturer reached out to me and chatted about my build. I was planning to use his decal sheet for the markings but the sheet I have lacked the prominent formation lights on the nose, fuselage and tail (it’s part of his ‘simple’ series with bare minimum of markings). CJM offered to print up a more complete sheet for me FOC in exchange of being able to use my photos for his use. When his care package arrived, it turned out that he threw in two T-50 reference booklets. How nice of him.
Looking at the booklet I realized that there’s a raised ring on the tail that needs to be removed. But I decided to proceed with the decals and left it alone.
The decals went on without a problem. They were thin and worked well with Mark Softer. The formation lights being decals saved me a ton of time masking and painting. Note that the T-50 lacks the TNI-AU roundel on the top side of the wings.
But there are two of them on the bottom. Odd.
I then picked out the minor details around the aircraft with handpaint and markers.
The only thing done for the bottom were the lights on the intakes.
For the panel wash, I used Flory Dark Dirt Wash over a satin coat.
I then installed the nose gear. The nose gear fits straight in which is wrong so it was pinned and carefully attached at a slight angle.
The stores went on next which were done with CA glue.
Upon removing the canopy mask I found some shoddy work which required some careful cleaning up with toothpicks.
It was at this point that I realized the leading edge canopy frame should be gray so I carefully masked it off.
Ok. It’s much more ‘accurate’ now.
And with that I’m done. This hasn’t been that bad of a build although that main landing gear breaking was certainly annoying. I’m not sure why 3D printed resin are so brittle to be honest.
Build Log
Pt.1 – Construction | Pt.2 – Construction | Pt.3 – Painting | Pt.4 – Finishing
