I got this kit from Andrew Birkbeck. It came with an Aires resin cockpit set and so it was immediately ready to be my introduction to the crazy world of aftermarket multi media accessories.

Let me tell you how this went...

The cockpit

As I mentioned above, the cockpit was an aftermarket one. The Hasegawa standard cockpit was "ok" but I wanted to stretch out a bit and so off I went putting together metal pedals:

Yes, they are 3mm long and they had to be bent properly to resemble a pedal.

After building all the parts, I started assembling the resin cockpit and giving it a coat of German grey, followed by a bit of drybrushing. Added the harness (painted in leather) and it looked like a semi-decent first attempt:

Thing is, either I didn't read the instructions properly, or the kit was not properly fitted, because I had to seriously shave the insides on the fuselage in order to have it fit:

As we were saying, first attempts :)

After that, the model was assembled, primed and given a coat of RLM76 (Lifecolor UA 074):

So far, so good.

Instead of priming with the Army Painter or Tamiya primers, I tried to use the Vallejo Surface Primer Grey with the airbrush. Lovely result, great cover, settled down perfectly in the panel lines and didn't build up. Definitely something to do again for the next build.

I then went forward with the base colors. For the variant I was going for, I need the classic RLM74/75/76 combo, and of course, I didn't have any of those (not a lot of use for Luftwaffe precise matches in Warhammer 40k or RAF models). I went to the Skyway Model Shop to pick them up and tried, as an experiment, a Lifecolor acrylic set.

The light blue gray went on perfectly, as shown in my previous post, and then I masked the bottom part of wings, ailerons and the fuselage, as I was trying to do some mottling on the sides.

For the wings, I cut some masks out of paper and stuck them on the plane with rolls of masking tape, so the paper was actually slightly removed from the model and thus create a softer transition between the colors. That worked ok, there's room for improvement but it's not bad for a first try.

Then, disaster stroke.

I tried to do the mottling on the sides with the airbrush. I have to confess I'm not very good at that, either the paint was too thick or I was using the wrong pressure, but the results were awful and pretty much ruined the quite decent paint job I had achieved so far.

I had options, tho:

1. Consider the model a loss and reuse parts in the future
2. Completely drench it into some kind of solution to remove all paint and start again
3. Surgically use Q-tips and thinner to remove the bad parts and try again Of course I choose the most complicated option, number 3.

I didn't even take pictures at this time, as I was a bit bummed. Once I reached a state where most of the bad paint was removed, I did another coat of light gray (RLM76) and then mixed some Vallejo Barley Gray with German Gray (3:1) and proceeded to cover the top of the fuselage and a bit of the sides. Maybe not proper mottling, but close enough to my novice eye :)

Not absolute perfection, but a long way from total failure.

After a coat of Pledge floor polish, I put the finishing touches, added the landing gear and the decals.

I mean, it could have been worse.

Raw photos of this build, with no commentary