I’m pleased to
share another model from Guam. Once again my focus has been aircraft that
were based on the island, or fought in the area in the major land and carrier
battles in the Marianas. The Betty is the wonderful Hasegawa kit. It
has adequate internal detail (except seatbelts) and the overall construction is
very easy. My model was a little more difficult as it was sent half
constructed from Washington DC to Guam, which created some broken off guns and
antenna. Aside from that the kit is highly recommended.
Click on
images below to see larger images
Overall the construction
involved two major steps. The first was assembling in DC, and the
second was trying to repair in Guam. Once these two steps were done
the painting followed my usual routine. This is simply painting the
base coat, followed by some light panel center lightening. At this
point gloss coat and decals are added. The kit decals are a little
thick, but went down fine with Solvaset. Any color in the pictures
except a green, or some shade thereof, is a decal. I wanted to try
all kit decals (especially the thick Hasegawa ones) and they turned out
fine.
For the final
weathering steps I continued with my normal post fade techniques. After
the decals are on I shoot a flat coat with a touch of lighter color. I
then keep lightening the mix and working into the center of the panels. At
this point another gloss coat goes on and a panel line wash of black oils goes
on. This is finished off with a very thin mix of flat and a touch of white
and the base color (this is pretty random). My last step is post shade of
red brown and black highly thinned. Hope you all enjoy!
Andrew Marriott
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