Thanks everyone! Murph, thanks for the pics. I'm glad I decided not to spend all that time sanding out the intake seam, as it appears its supposed to be there according to that frontal pic...
I got some work in and finished her up. I would have posted more in-progress pics but I got blocked out of the forum for a while. Everytime I entered my email and password it would go back to the login-in screen??? It seems to be working now obviously. I thought I was blocked for some reason. If that keeps happening I'm going to go elsewhere. Anyways..
I painting in all the stripes and lines then taped them off. This is sooooo much better than trying to make those yellow stripe decals conform and then look right.
It was then dusted with primer and I started the Alclad finish. To me Duraluminum is the best "combat" shade so that's my base coat. I then taped off select panels and sprayed them different shades. Here's the results. In hindsight, at least with NMF, I'll probably lay down the NMF then tape off and paint in the stripes, as I had paint ridges in some areas where I layed down the Alclad too thick. (Note: I accidentally painted the wing walk line red, it should be black, I later corrected that...der!)
Time for decals. I took a deep breath and tried out the Hasegawa decals as I need Parr's markings. Surprisingly they behaved perfectly. I was especially worried about the big USAF on the wings. I had no issues and used my normal Micro Sol.
I just love that 4th FG boxing Eagle....
.....and after the decals were sealed, I added a Dart Dirt Flory wash and a post shade. Postshading on NMF tends to be difficult because you have to add more black to make it show up and it's easy to overdo it. Hopefully I didn't. It was assembled here's the finished product....
Thanks for tagging along.......now back to that P-38