The Bishkek 2nd Valkyrie, Part 2: Camo

Here's the next day of work on the Bishkek 2nd Valkyrie. After having done the interior, it's time for the priming of the rest of the plane. Before that I had to tape off the cabin so no primer would get in, here's the picture after that first coat.

Then I misted the bottom of the plane white, no taping just turned upside down and pushed primer onto it letting it fall on the sides.

Here is a side, it looks like this:

still according to the plan. Now, being ready for the basecoat of the camo, I had to tape off the cockpit, the engines and the lasgun

A lot of this is all P and P: planning and patience. I want to camo this thing so badly but I know if I don't take it slow, I will mess it up.

I didn't take a picture of the plane basecoated in Desert Yellow from Tamiya, but here I am taping the camo pattern layout on. One note on the yellow spray, to preserve the white on the bottom, I did the opposite side and let the yellow and white blend in on the lower part. it came out nice

The forgeworld modeling book advises to cut the tape, but I don't like that, so I cut out little squares and put them on in random fashion to break the lines

Here's the bottom.

Because the next layer is dark, now is the time to tape up all the parts you don't want dark, a lot of work. It took me the better part of two hours to tape up the entire plane and keep doing it until I was satisfied.

here's a word of caution, try to prevent having tape stick up so your next spray layer can seep underneath it. Here's an example and the way to fix it.

Here's the opening

press it down with a sculpting tool

and it's fixed.

Doing this dilligently will save you lots of touch up later, although seeping cannot be prevented as I found out later...

Here's the dark coat: some darker brown solidly, then a light mist of really dark brown

and there it is

After all that work, still seeping....

Side shot 1

side shot 2

top shot open

top shot closed

and a cockpit shot

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I am really pleased with how the camo came out. One lesson that I learned from this: patience, patience and lots of tape really, really do pay off

More to come this week

Mike