AREA 88: F-5E Tiger II (SHIN)

I've been waiting to open this box for a while. 

The sprues look pretty good. 

Well, let's get grey! 

After struggling to paint them properly, I chickened out and went with decals for the cockpit 

Glued the fuselage together. Nice tight fit. 

After a quick bit of sanding, I'm trying out some undercoat shading. 

Covered that up with a light coat of white... now to mask off the blue area. 

Ta-da! Now it's blue and white... with a bit extra blue on the far wing. A bit of overspray that should be easily fixed. 

I ended up spraying white from a dirty airbrush, so it took more coats than I wanted to fix the blue overspray. At least the aluminium parts look good. 

Most of the underside bits are added on. The aluminium is hard to spot in this light, but it's there. 

A few more details added... looking almost done now. I suppose I should add the cockpit parts before I forget, right? 

I stole some part for the cockpit from the ESCI (repop) F-5A kit... but it's worth it. The decals really bring it together. 

Side by side... a scene never depicted in the manga, but brought together on my workbench.