1:48 Mitsubishi F-2A Viper Zero J.A.S.D.F. Camouflage

The Viper Zero over the Sea of Japan

The Mitsubishi F-2 grew out of an American single-engine fighter, but the Japanese designers enlarged its wing by roughly a quarter, reworked the air intake and fitted composite skins. The result is a machine with a silhouette of its own, which modelers recognize at a glance by the width of the lifting surfaces. The nickname joining the names of two aircraft caught on because of the way an American starting point met Japanese tradition in it. It is intended above all against surface targets, and the finish matches that.

Two blues and one gray

The scheme rests on a pair of blue tones meant to suppress the aircraft against the surface of the sea: a darker, almost inky one on top and a lighter, brighter blue as the second field. The underside carries a neutral light gray. Anyone who wants to be precise will add a shade for the radome as well, which tends to differ from its surroundings. It is advisable to spray all three tones from one batch of thinning, so that the sheen of the fields does not break up.

Workshop equipment

• An airbrush with a spray pattern at least wide enough for the wing area, ideally a nozzle of around 0.3 mm.
• A sharp point for separating the pieces and a flat spatula for pressing the edges down.
• A gloss varnish as the base; over a matte finish paint gets under the film far more easily.
• A supply of tape for covering the areas the pieces of the set do not mask on their own.

Finish the cockpit and the joining of the fuselage halves first, because sanding the seam after spraying destroys exactly the edges the set is bought for. Lay down the lighter blue first and the darker one only over the mask; the other way round the dark tone would show through and would need to be covered with a greater number of coats.