Canopy bits and priming

The endless pain of transparent pieces

Being of an excited mind I didn't remember what I had said the last time about the sharpness of a hobby knife. Luckily these pieces didn't have overcomplicated shapes on them.

At least I had the decency to check the instructions, just in case, before taking the glue out. My transparent sprue had four pieces: two canopy pieces, a bit for the targeting reticle and something that looked like a part of a landing gear light, but that didn't seem to have a place in the instructions.

I glued the targeting thing onto the dashboard. Maybe it got installed correctly, I hoped it did.

As usual I applied white glue on all the edges of the canopy pieces to glue them tightly both to the airframe and especially each other. I had this silly idea in my head that if I filled all the gaps with this goo they'd get airtight enough to keep my painstakingly handpainted cockpit details safe from the upcoming airbrush attack.

Priming I

The Flanker's priming was started from the upper half of the plane for I thought it might be the more complicated half, due to the limited amount of  handholds on the bottom. I was beginning to wonder if my primer had seen too many cycles around Sol already as it has been a bit more flakey during painting in the few last projects. I guess I also got too close to the target areas while painting as there was some puddling on one of the tail wings. That was something I could maybe sand and repaint later on.

Priming II

Spoiler: when priming the bottom of the plane I got somewhat enthusiastic and started painting the engine exhaust nozzles metallic (VMA 71065 Steel). I had no idea how but apparently I managed to knock the other nozzle clean off at some point. Damn.