Hasegawa 1/48 RF-86F-30

I have been working on interior bits.  People seem to have problems with the nose "cone" fitting.  It does seem to be a bit large but that won't be too hard to deal with.  Also, issues were noted with getting the cone properly aligned with the inlet duct if the order of the instructions is followed.  Since I am doing it gear up the nose gear bay is dispensed with, but in any case it seems better to fit the nose cone to the duct before installing it in the fuselage.  I should have done one more step of test fitting, as it appears the inlet duct is just a bit too long leaving a small gap at the join to the fuselage.  Next time I'll add that step.  At this point the duct is permanently installed to one side of the fuselage, and I am fitting the big nose gear door to one side now.  The cockpit is pretty much together.  I can see that you could resolve the diameter problem with the nose cone by shortening the duct and the fuselage sides slightly, but that may be risky.

The Alclad ALC 101 has been applied over a Mr. Surfacer 1500 black primer. Serious damage was done to the masking supplies in setting up to paint the theater stripes, in this photo the black stripes have been painted using Model Master Black Chrome and then have been masked off. After this photo an undercoat of flat white was sprayed on the yellow areas.

 Got the buzz number on the tail and the greyish color on the wing inner panels now. Next is the USAF on the wings which had to follow the grey areas.

I think I'm done with the masking and painting, now it's just down to the decals.  The gun ports were not present of the RF-86's, but to fool the enemy they were painted on.  I puzzled for a while on how to do that, and then decided to use a pencil.  I cut masks for the outlines and ran a pencil around the inside and made smudges where the barrels would show.  Overcoated that with Alclad Aqua Gloss.  I didn't think I could cut or place a mask well enough to do a creditable job with paint.

Spent most of the day putting on stencils and the stars and bars.  I'm sure I missed a few but who's to know.  A few bits to add yet and I'll have to put a seal coat on it since there may be handling I can't control at the museum.  I'm thinking a dusting of Alclad aqua gloss and if it is too shiny after that a dust coat of Alclad flat.

All done, ready to go. I skipped the final flat coat as I was happy with just a light coat of Alclad Aqua Gloss.