I like how the flat coat takes all of the different elements (surface details, paint finish, masked markings, decals and wash effects) and gives a unified shell appearance to the exterior of the aircraft.
I thought this would be a good time to paint the exposed gun barrels. Since they stand clear of the surrounding gun trough, it would be easy enough to paint by brush but I thought I'd take advantage of the barrels' separation and spray them with the airbrush.
Some careful and creative masking...
The gun barrels were painted Alclad Stainless steel with the tips sprayed with black.
Here's the painted drop tank. I've cut off the molded representation of the strap and replaced it with a strip of thin brass sheet. The fuel lines were also cut off and replaced (with brass tubing) as the molded lines were too short and did not extend into the drop tank rack as they should have. One pet peeve are the EagleCal representation of the drop tank stencils. The forward most one should have a curved line of text to match the curvature of the drop tank. Inexplicably, the Revell decal is curved but in the wrong direction!
