F22 - construction

The model comes with PE for the cockpit and for the weapons bay cover. I only used the seatbelts, as the instrument panel was beautiful in plastic already. I was surprised, how well it all fits and while there are many pieces, it goes together rather well. 

View of the instrument panel 

The inside resembles a construction site with its own scaffolding - so many pieces for support. 

Testing for of the air intakes. This came up as a challenging point in YouTube videos and indeed, fit could be better - once its glued together, I expect some quality time with sanding paper and some putty. 

It's now put together, some sanding required. Now struggling with what the right paints to use are. 

Tester of paint - MRP-005 black, followed by Alclad polished alu, then MRP dark ghost grey on all sides. Inner paint is MRP medium mod grey and darkest inside is dark mod grey. At the very end, MRP "have glass" on the whole right half.
All layers over polished aluminium were very light, the alu seeps through. I'm very impressed by the added look of "have glass", it adds an effect like fresh snow seen in sunlight, you have these shiny dots all over the place. It makes for a beautiful effect and I'll use it on the plane. I'll now wait for at least 12h to check how the paint changes with drying as all layers were put immediately after each other. 

 

 

Alclad alu over whole body, then added light ghost grey for the edges. 

Very slow progress over summer, but finally had some little time to continue with masking.