Been waiting for a bit for the kit parts to build up and I decided I can't wait any longer :-)

Started today with the Monocoque and painted the front and back sections in silver in prep for the Museum Collection decals. I wanted to get the full Kevlar effect for these parts as the detailed pictures show the 'gold/yellow' bleed through in certain lights. agonised over airbrushing these parts or brush painting and in the end went for brush painting to deliberately give that 'hand layed' look of the original.

CF/Kevlar techniques were pretty basic back then and looking at the close up shots you can see the underlying surface is pretty rough in places, especially in the cockpit around the gear lever and seat sides. Still experimenting as I don't want it too look 'too' yellow but I want that tint to come through. Being anal I bought two sets of the Monocoque decals and getting the base coat right.

Anyway, while I am waiting on the silver base coat to dry thoroughly I have put the streaky Museum Collection carbon decals on the inside edges of the front wing end plates. Hmm, it is quite subtle... you need the light to catch it to show the lines but I think, in scale it is about right.

Nice to see a another build going.. Be good to see some pics. On this one sounds good.

OK, so after a bit of a lull... I added the Museum decals and was disappointed with the 'instructions'. Two things I am not happy with, first the c/f for the wing endplates and second the Kevlar for the monocoque.

First, the Kevlar decals with the Museum Collections instructions are rubbish. If you follow their 'advice' it looks terrible MUCH too yellow so I am starting again on that one. The issue is that the colour shows throw the 'holes' in the decal and the overall effect is Disney not McLaren. So plan B here is to paint a bunch of colours in some card and lay strips of decal over these and get the right effect by trial and error. I have the Japanese detail book and in those shots the front part of the monocoque is a sort of brown-y colour so I'll start there. The difficulty is the show-through effects the overall effect substantially.

Second, the c/f MC decals have to be laid over a lighter base otherwise you don't see the lines. Again, a bit of trial and error and I got what I thought was the right amount of show-throw. The colour I landed on was Tamiya XF-63 German Grey. I'll post some pics.

Senna figure finally arrived.

Final assembly of the monocoque - Finished the Kevlar on the tub and the Marlboro logo applied.



Offset rear shot after taking the engine off ready for final assembly.

Turbo plenums carboned with Museum Collection decals - need to smoke them to tone down the silver effect a little and a little more work with the MicroSol Microset but getting there.

Here's the monocoque with the front Kevlar and the Marlboro logos added (sorry if that is not PC). And the steering wheel with the tiny labels added.

Well, i`m not sure if it`s the correct Name of the part in english, but the fuel hoses (?) are mounted in the wrong direction.

As maybe you can see in my diary, i also made a similar mistake - and i can tell you - correcting it was a mess! So i wish you good luck!

Otherwise nice detail!