This month’s club theme was “Mean n’ Green” to recognize St Patrick’s Day. I decided to complete my HiPlanes Seafire III in the markings of No. 1 (Fighter) Squadron, Irish Air Corps, Gormanston, late 1940’s.
OOB, but this was my first attempt at weathering. I used the techniques in the March 2009 FSM and think I overdid it a bit, but I like it anyway. I used Model Master enamel nr 2097, Panzer Olivgrun for the overall green shade. It doesn’t look grey enough for me, but British Interior Green is too bright/light. The pastels toned it down quite a bit. Decals layed down okay, but needed Daco Products strong formula decal setting solution to finally look right.
Tim, nice to see someone else building Irish Air Corps aircraft. Thats a nice spit you have there and it looks well built. Good job on it overall. Your right about the green colour, its a little dark and Humbrol 78 is the correct colour which is a little lighter. One other note is that the Irish flag on the fin is backwards. The green should be towards the front
Thanks everyone. As I said it’s OOB, including the markings. I don’t have any of the refs HiPlanes cited and all online photos I could find were b&w. HiPlanes instructions show the orange forward and green abaft the orange. Frankly looking at the fuselage roundel with the orange aft it would make sense.
The instructions also show the green as FS24172 with no cross reference to any manufacture.
HiPlanes kits force a modeler to be a modeler. With care they do look very good, though when finished. The exterior detail is outstanding. Interiors can be much better with work, but in 72nd my desire is for good exterior detail. Most kits where I’ve done the interior detailing it all got lost even with the canopy open – need a magnifier to see it and few people look at them that closely once the club members have seen it.
