Saturday, July 26, 2008

Paving the Hangar

After a lot of hesitation and research I decided to paint the hangar deck Tamiya NATO black (XF-69). Why the hesitation, well as with any aircraft carrier the state of the deck will change overtime from a flat black when refresh/updated to a light gray color during extensive use (just like a highway). Since I am not an expert in weathering I decided to go with the cleaner look of black deck. Flat black was my initial idea until I realized that the island bottom half is also flat black. I wanted to have a slight contrast between the main flight deck and the island so I opted for the NATO black instead.

I first started by painting the walls Tamiya flat white (XF-2) which was the easy part. To airbrush the NATO black I first had to mask the walls because on the real ship the black goes up the wall several feet. it was not easy to mask the walls due to the size (11mm high) but the extra attention to detail was worth the trouble. I then added decals to simulate the red/yellow checkered lines around the interior hangar doors which can been seen from the exterior hangar door.

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