I glued the assembly inside a fuselage half and glued the fuselage together. Some joints appeared then, but I decided to leave them for the time being.

I painted the interior of the Aeroclub nose tire black, as well as the Neomega parts. The CMK nose cone was painted Testors Aluminium, and the radome was painted Testor’s RAF interior green. The Airfix air intake parts are aluminium too. I glued the resin part on one intake half and closed the intake. Some saw and sandpaper work is to be done to get a correct fit.

I installed the whole air intake in the Aeroclub nose, and the assembly was used as a guide for the Neomega floor. Some test fitting shown me the cuts I had to make on the Aeroclub parts to have the top of the instrument panel fit. After some drybrushing on the sidewalls, the instrument panel and the rear bulkhead, I cyanoed the Neomega parts. I added two .44 lead balls in the nose to avoid a tail-sitting Lightning, and joined the nose halves. Some heavy joint lines appeared, but I left them too.

The first moment of truth was close : joining the nose to the fuselage ! Well, it was not so bad. My saw cuts were correct (woohoo !) and there were only minor imperfections. The most troublesome spots came from the difference in plastic thickness. I treated all that with putty, as well as the joint lines on the fuselage and nose. A hearty sanding session, followed with a coat of grey paint to track the remaining flaws, and another puttying/sanding session gave a good and smooth skin to the model.

I left the fuselage to give some attention to the wings. The CMK resin parts are very nice, but need a heavy thinning down of the wing interiors.. I used a Dremel on low speed, and subrepticiously gave it a go on the resin parts too. The resin wheel wells were cyanoed in place ad the wings were assembled. I used some plastic card to avoid a step between the parts. On my sample, there were ugly sink marks on the upper side of each wing, near the leading edge and near the tip of the slats. Some more putty and sandpaper treated them quickly.

The wings don’t join very well to the fuselage, but this is easily corrected. The fin and the tailerons were glued without any trouble.

The airbrakes were a problem. I had decided to display them closed, as most Lightning have them in this position on the ground. The trouble is, they refuse to be flush with the rest of the fuselage : the port one is too thin, and the starboard one too thick ! Putty and sanding on one side, filing and sanding on the other, and that was that.

The intake lip was rather entertaining, too. There was a lot of cleaning to do on the Aeroclub metal lip, so I decided to use the Airfix part. Sure, but it was not designed for this nose… I got the shape right with putty and sanding and polishing, as the lip is to be polished metal, and that kind of color does need a flawless finish.

I then gave the model an ocean grey coat to check the surface. I was surprised to find it quite good.

Painting, or if at first you don’t succeed…

I originally thought of doing a T5 from 5 Sqn as it was on an APC : all the spine, from 1 meter behind the cockpit to the nozzles was painted white. I even had it painted that way, and was thinking of doing the tail decals and squadron markings myself. But I ruined the paint in the nose area trying to install correctly the windshield, and I had ran out of Aeromaster Ocean grey… And there was no more Aeromaster Ocean grey to be found around here. So I decided to paint it all over again, after removing the original paint. I made a quick poll in various modeling shops in France, and was generally told to use oven cleaner to get rid of the paint. No problem, I removed the paint in no time. I removed a good amount of painstakingly polished putty, too. I breathed deeply, looked for a hammer, took the hammer, looked at the model, and put the hammer away.

I looked for the hammer once again when I saw the nose cone part had decided to break free inside the intake. The front wheel well was moving freely too, as it is the same chunk of resin. I took care of that using 2 component epoxy and by asking my wife to hide the hammer.

Okay, here I went again, puttying and sanding and generally cleaning the model up. I looked at the decal sheet, and thought a 11 Sqn bird would look good, too. I only had to do the « S » for the serials… Too bad, no white spine for my Lightning, but a lot less work to do !

I began with a gloss black acrylic coat on the belly and under the wings, preparing for the Alclad II Duraluminium. I painted the back, the wings and the leading edges under the wings Humbrol Ocean grey, and let the model dry for a whole week. I made masks with drafting tape, and shot the dark green coat, using Gunze #330. Do not use the same dark green as the WW II green, as post war British dark green is more olive than the one used on WW II birds.

A few masks and airbrush sessions later, I masked the flanks and the leading edges, and shot the Duraluminium coat. I painted the part around the nozzles Dark Aluminium and the intake lip Highly Polished Aluminium.

Decaling and finishing

All the bits that protrude and break easily were still to be glued in place.

I first painted the seats, using pictures from Wings Of Fame Vol 7 for reference. I made the ejection handles out of thin electrical wire, and painted them yellow with black stripes. The sticks were painted black, and I used a small acetate square as the gunsight.

I made hydraulic lines on the gear legs and the three white collars that hold them, painted the legs with MM Aluminium, and glued the legs in place. The doors were painted Duraluminium and glued too.

I dipped the vacuformed canopy in Klir (in English : Future), and let it dry. I glued all the parts inside it with cyano, after painting them tire black. I masked the canopy using scotch tape (Thanks, Mr C !) and shot some black on it. I made new masks, using the first ones as guides, to shoot some yellow around the windows.

I glued the pitot probe (Highly polished aluminium) and the IFR probe at that time. This one is black with a silver tip.

The decals went down without trouble, as I helped them along with Aerosol. The only problem was the « S » letters in the serial. I used the 8 from the decal sheet, and cut them with a #11 blade. They don’t look exactly right, but I decided I didn’t care about that one. Think of that as a 6 ft model if you want…

Once the decals were dry, and the Redtop missiles glued in place, I gave the model a final coat of dullcote, and breathed deeply.

This is my first attempt at a conversion. This has not been a walk to the park : I hadn’t the instructions for the Neomega parts, I had trouble with Metallizer paints (if you look at them the wrong way, they flee.), the joys of doing my own decals, or rather of trying to do my own decals, and I had the utter pleasure of destroying an almost completed paint job.

I can’t say this bird is beautiful. It is not. But I’m rather pleased with what I did. And I’ll build another tub, and that one will be NMF !

Sébastien Privat

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