Work on the Neptune this week has been very tedious. First, I had a lot of questions and comments on why I use kapton tape. So there are a couple of photos on removing the tape masks on the canopy. I then installed the landing gear. The nose gear did not have the landing light so I scratch built the housing from styrene rod then made the lens using acrylic gel.
Once I had all the base coat painting completed I started to do the decals. Since this kit was manufactured way back in the early 1970’s, the kit decals did not age well. I cut out a decal for the Japanese scheme to see how they would work. After soaking in warm water for over three minutes the decal started to slide. However, it then immediately broke apart. I took another one and coated it with Microscale decal film and let it dry. It still took a long time of soaking buy I was able to get the decal to stay mostly together. It required some very careful small movements to get it moved and placed on the spare surface. It was successfully placed. I decided that the only decal’s I was going to use off the sheet was the yellow rectangles for the tail. I then dug thru my spare decal binder and after an extensive search I located nearly all of the letters and numbers in the correct sizes as well as the US insignias. Surprisingly I found a decal for the propeller warning lines that was the correct size and looked more accurate than the kit decal. I then made the squadron logo decal that goes on the nose, the trident for the tip of the tail, and the “Jet Intake” decals. Since each of the letters and numbers were individual decals it took a lot of time to get them placed and aligned. With all the decals placed I then started on the heavy weathering starting with the jet engines. The aircraft itself was sealed with a matte finish so that the weathering can be applied. I will be using three different shades of blue and two shades of gray to weather the aircraft with gray, black, and brown for exhausts.