What's on my desk? Part 93.

The 'gold' collector ducting was painted using Silver paint, with Clear Yellow brushed over it. The rear suspension is pretty complicated, requiring a sequence of painting & building. That's next.

I also finished the seat and dashboard. The dash has some coloured buttons, for which I lay down a base with a drop of white paint. Applying red and blue paint directly over a black base will dull down the colours too much.

There's a lot of black in there. Tamiya calls out semi-gloss and matt blacks for different surfaces, like the seat belts. I opted to paint the seat belts with Tires & Rubber instead, to obtain a clear contrast. The fasteners were painted matt aluminium. After the decals were applied, I gave the seatbelts a coat of matt varnish:

Meanwhile, I received the after-market Tabu decals with the Marlboro titles:

The seatbelt 'BOSS' decals are also included in this sheet. You can see how the Tamiya decals have yellowed with age. The Tabu decals also look thinner and a bit more in scale, so those are the ones I used.

Still a ways to go with the F1 car, but it's moving on.

For the Bergepanther I airbrushed the upper hull in Mr. Hobby 79 Sandy Yellow, then brushpainted the rear mountings for the engine panels Red Brown. Here it is, loose in its place:

And that's the reason why I painted the base yellow now. If I'd waited to paint it when in place, I'd have to mask all the holes. Around the winch you can see slots in the top deck. That's where the superstructure will go. I can put this in place and won't need to mask off the winch when painting the camouflage. The engine covers will mask off the engine bay. The only masks I'll have to apply is over the crew compartment in the front.

Speaking of the superstructure, I painted the frames around the wood parts in the same Red Brown as the interior. This kind of colour, usually called 'red oxide', was commonly used by German factories as a primer. I'm planning to chip the paint on these panels, so I need these to be painted completely in advance:

Finally, the T-2 Buckeye. Not much progress here. I did some panel lining using Neutral Wash over the light grey (ignore the bad paint job on the floor, this will be hidden by the seats):

I painted the dash covers and constructed the instrument panels. These are two pre-coloured PE parts each and they don't fit very well. I had to grind out the covers and cut a slot in the side consoles on the rear cockpit, while constantly test-fitting into the fuselage. The front one is still loose, which is why it's askew:

There's supposed to be more PE for a small instrument on top of the rear instrument cover, but it seems that Special Hobby packaged the wrong (or an updated) PE sheet:

See the difference? They deleted the 'not to be used' parts, but forgot to keep the small instruments on the right (I drew an arrow pointing to them).

Inside the fuselage, together with the cockpit go the intake and exhaust ducts, and the nose wheel bay. I have to paint these first. The cockpit still needs some weathering, especially the side consoles. I already have a nose weight, fashioned out of some lead sheet, so I should be able to close the fuselage this week.

That's it for now.

See you next week!