Model plastic kits - the F3 Lightning in 1/72 scale built and painted by me

The Airfix Lightning kit contains decals and painting instructions for two different F3 Lightning examples. One version is a camouflaged RAF 5 squadron aircraft with natural aluminium undersides and dark green/dark sea grey above the demarkation line. The other aircraft catered for is the multiple shade of grey Lightning of 11 squadron. Both aircraft were based at Binbrook in the early 1980s. If you are after a natural metal finish Lightning there are plenty of after market decal sets available to allow this.
For this model aircraft I decided to go with the camouflage version, this was mostly influenced after priming the model with grey primer (looked boring). I've also seen some cracking good pictures of camouflage painted Lightnings.
This colour scheme is the more complicated to apply however, a natural metal finish is always a challenge (for my limited painted talents) and camouflage schemes are labour intensive.

To start with as mentioned above the whole aircraft was brushed primed with some grey enamel paint (after masking off the canopy with some Maskol). I was going to spray on a coat of car primer (cellulose based) but had run out of the stuff and couldn't be bothered to visit the shops, the enamel did the business however.
A few imperfections were shown up by the primer coat as per usual, these were sorted and it was time to do the top coats.

The best, fastest and easiest way to do this would be to spray the whole underside in aluminium paint, followed by masking this off then paintning the top side with one of the colours (the grey would be logical), then when dry masking out the camo pattern and spraying on the dark green. Then all the detail painting could be done with a brush.

The way I did it this time though was an all paint brush job. I masked off the camo pattern in Maskol and painted a couple of coats of green on. When dry I removed the masking and painted two coats of sea grey paint up to the green. When this was dry I turned my attention to the underside of the aircraft. After masking the top with tape, Humbrol metalic aluminium paint was used which went on pretty well with a brush. In between all of these coats the model was gently rubbed down with fine wire wool, this is horrible stuff but does a good job.

The stand is a made from a block of varnished beech hardwood with two clear plastic plates epoxied either side. The plates are cut out to form a cradle for the model Lightning. The clear plastic is quite unobtrusive.

Spot the difference... get it?

To make the alloy underside of the Lightning look more like a real metal multi-panelled aircraft surface, I repainted some panels individually with linear brushstrokes. Different panels were brushed in different directions in an attempt to make them reflect light differently. I also rubbed these lightly with wire wool to achieve the same effect. This appears to work quite well. The whole metal underside was given some watered down acrylic black paint worked well in with a brush, some panels were given extra treatment with this wash to alter the paint tone slighty. Finally the alloy coloured surfaces were given a coat of Humbrol clear satin.

The top side was also given a black wash coat but conservatively as these aircraft were well looked after in RAF service.

All of this paint was Humbrol matt enamel. The plans call for the use of satin finish paint but I used matt on this military jet. The surface was buffed up slightly with cotton cloth to give it a slight sheen, more so where the transfers were to be applied to help avoid silvering. This beats a totally even varnish finish I reckon. Sometimes you see full gloss models of these aircraft, to me they look a little toy like and unrealistic. Much of the secret of realism in the small scale is toning stuff down I reckon.

Lighting model kit page 1

Lighting model kit page 3

Model aircraft email.