EE Lightning F1 WIP #2

I did not realise that it had been this long since I last updated on the Lightning project. But as you can see from the following photos, work has progressed a fair bit since the GT-R was finished. As I was doing the Lightning in one of the metal finish options, Alclad is going to be the main product used to paint her. 

The process started by using their grey micro primer followed by a few coats of gloss black primer. To help with the finish, a couple of coats of honey primer over the black improved the gloss finish of the black. 

First I sprayed the inlet ring, exhaust and two panels on the fuselage with Alclad chrome, then sealed with some Alclad aqua gloss clear to protect the finish. Then the exhaust outlets were hand painted afterwards.

After the chrome panels situated on the fuselage just under the wings were sprayed and masked off, the rest of the fuselage was sprayed with Alclad Airframe Aluminium and seal with some clear. I next picked out a few panels in different shade of aluminium like you will find on the real aircraft then sealed again with some more clear.

After the fuselage had dried overnight, it was masked off to spray the spine and tail with gloss black. I first went over the area with some black primer then the topcoat was done with Mr Hobby gloss black followed by some clear. 

I am still trying to find a masking tape which does not mark the Alclad when it is used on it. The tape that I use is meant to be low tack, but it still marks the finish of the Alclad. This needed to be touched up afterwards.

The Lightning is looking really nice at this stage giving me a boost for finishing the model.

Now it is time to start on the decals on the model. I started with laying down the roundals and general aircraft markings first on the model. Then the process of all of the aircraft stencilling decals started, which some lay over some of the roundals and marking.

Once all of the decals were done and sealed, I temporary stick the undercarriage on with blutac to see how she was sitting. No evidence of her trying to be a tailsitter, I had got the nose weigh just right on her.

The kit supplied ejector seat was not very good. In fact, the general detail of the cockpit interior and undercarriage bays are not up to the new kits from Airfix. For this project, I ordered a resin seat from Quickboost. Even though it was a seat for a Lightning, I needed to cut away small sections from the bottom edges to get it to fit into the space in the tub. This has made a vast improvement to the cockpit as it is the seat that you will mainly see looking in. 

These photos are about a week or so old now as we have had a little emergency at home. This post was meant to be finished and uploaded last week but I was unable to finish this post and another project post. The next post of the Lightning project will be of the finished model.