The gunnery dept

An enemy plane should look like an enemy, to make it more believable in the war games, I guess. There were a couple of really fun-looking bombs in the AtG box, that I assume to have recognized as GBU-8 bombs with the friendly assistance of Google. Somehow they didn't feel like this Falcon for me, but more like the Hog. I decided to leave them in the box for the time being. Good old iron bombs also didn't have the feel, but rocket pods...

LAU-3

The nineteen-rocket capacity LAU-3 was something that I liked an awful lot in the OFP's helicopters. I built two pods to begin with and pondered if I wanted a double amount just because of the attitude. My main problem with these (and every other modern aircraft weapon) was the compability of the weapon and the plane's hardpoints and pylons. In the end I decided to leave my fancy plans and stick to two of these and the double drop tanks. And if I really needed to, I'd be able to set up two more pods pretty quickly.

The pieces were primed along some other stuff and later on I painted them light grey just like everything else on the bottom side of the plane. The faces and the rocket tips I painted metallic and later on I applied a bluish wash on the rocket tips (assuming that they don't play their war games with live ordnance).

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The weapons platform

At this point I tore the canopy masks off. There had been a bit of leakage in a couple of places, but I scratched the thin sandy coloured mess off without any issues.

There were some comments about the pylons in the Finnish version. I did check the instructions and I had been wrong with my memory. The innermost pylons were for the fuel tanks and the middle ones for something else. I assume that the LAU-3 pods are ok to install on those and if not, tough cookies. The unexcusable sand-coloured mess I painted over just afterr taking the photo.

Paintjob finished

The last part to be painted was the engine nozzle. That I simply painted with Gunmetal Grey (VMC 70863) to the best of my understanding. I decided that this was it, all I needed to do anymore was to attach the tools under the wings. Next I'd move on to the washes, clearcoat, swearing with the decals and finally dullcoating the whole setup. At least that's what I had thought in my sick mind.

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