ICM Ghost of Kyiv WIP and Quick Finish pics

Cutting off some of the dorsal fuselage to fit the resin exhaust. I did this with an exacto saw and kinda eyeballed it (because I'm a doofus). If I'd bothered measuring, maybe it would've used less filler! 

ResKit (left) vs. kit exhaust (right) 

Clamped! The fuselage halves went together nicely and didn't require much filler or sanding. 

Cockpit installed. Took a little finessing to have the instrument panel sit correctly. 

Little closer on instrument panel - does anyone else love hand painting these things as much as I do? 

Seat. You can see the dollop of putty on the section behind the cockpit - I think this sits flush with the canopy in reality, and it took a lot of sanding and filling to smooth it over here. 

Didn't go too nuts in here because it wouldn't be super visible. 

Exhaust assembly in process - primed the insides before assembly. 

Never going to see the insides of these again, but have to paint them anyway. 

Test fitting, some of the pre-shading done already 

Looks like a plane! 

Fitting the ResKit exhaust to the fuselage - they lined up pretty well! You can see where the engine cowling halves meet and the intake halves go together took quite a bit of work.  

Clearly my airbrush was a bit dirty while pre-shading the panels, but for this purpose it wasn't a big deal. 

Tweezers as wing supports while the glue dries 

Mr Color off-white for the top side 

German Grey for the nose cone 

Sky grey and flat black added 

Love it when you get crisp masking lines 

Whatever these heat shields are called that are molded into the fuselage got some Tamiya Titanium Silver and Vallejo Aluminum shades over the top. 

Sky grey on the under side 

Gun port probably wasn't painted accurately, oh well. I think I used Tamiya Dark Copper to get that look. 

Decals in progress - despite their size, they went on easy with few breaks and settled onto the surface nicely after Micro Sol. 

A little brown for oxidation on the exhausts. 

Clear coat time! 

Some of the pebbled finish on the bottom is from experimenting with bad primer. Note to self and others: stick to the good stuff, NOT Krylon or Rustoleum!