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I think this is one of Scott's most impressive kits so I bought this as soon as it was announced. It looks easy to build but it's not. To get smooth joins and flawless paintwork is a challenge. I used Tamiya grey then white undercoat, with sanding and polishing between coats to get a smooth white finish. The next big challenge is of course masking the stripes. Scott has provided some templates but I'm still considering how to get the bottom stripes parallel to the base. Scott has some good ideas for this, but I'll post the approach I decide to go with. At the moment I'm waiting a week for the white paint to fully cure. For windows apparently the original had some on the outside of the frame but Scott tells me he typically doesn't put windows in his TWA Moonliner builds so I think I'll follow this approach. Note the jig I built to enable me to rotate the kit without touching it (the top two pieces of wood rotate on a metal rod, which goes through the bottom of the Moonliner to keep it vertical). The legs are not glued at this stage and are being painted separately.

Here's my start on the red sections. I started with the legs and cut strips of heavy duty paper to the correct width. I used these as templates to mark the lines in pencil. I used Tamiya masking tape and flat red.






It came out quite well. The whole model will get a coat of gloss varnish before applying the decals.



There's one area of overspray which I'll remove later. Should come off easily enough.



Here's the base, which I'm still preparing for paint.



So I've made a start on the bottom stripes - very difficult to get these right.

I ended up using stiff card cut to the right length to mark the lines. As usual I used Tamiya masking tape.

I didn't bother masking the indents where the legs go - these are to be painted aluminium/silver. It turned out pretty well. One of the legs is still to be sprayed as it needs some filler on the bottom edge.

I messed up one of the sections so I had to sand off the red and re-spray. Here's where the advantage of using Tamiya undercoat for the white came in - the sanding hardly affected the white paint finish. I'll remask and finish this tomorrow.

I printed Scott's template on stiff paper and used it as a guide to draw the outline of upper red portions.


Here's the final mask! This is difficult to mask - I tried a few approaches but Tamiya masking tape was the most effective for me in the end.

It turned out reasonably well. This picture is before the gloss coat.




You can see the difference the gloss coat makes - brings it all together. This thing is costing me a fortune in Tamiya paint.

Note to people whom live in hot climates. I live in Texas and there have been 15 days of 100 degree heat in the past month. The join line between the brass cockpit and the resin kept on mysteriously appearing (when it had been perfectly smooth) and I had to keep on resanding and filling. Eventually I figured out that by spraying outside the heat was making the brass expand so the join kept on reappearing. Now I spray as quickly as I can and bring the model back inside before it heats up - it's worked so far.

I've put the decals on before painting the metallic nosecone and other metallic areas. This is so I can put a coat of gloss over the decals without affecting the metallic finish. I wouldn't recommend using decal coat on these decals - they are so thin it becomes impossible to adjust the positioning without them breaking. Lesson learned - just as well for me that Scott included 2 sets of decals!

I've made significant progress on the Moonliner. It's not finished yet - more painting to do on the struts and supports, but it's almost there. I decided to use Evergreen Styrene Rods instead of the aluminium ones provided in the kit. Refernce photos show these to be white so all I'll do is coat them with gloss varnish.

I have drilled the holes for the LEDs - the holes look quite big as I will be placing 5mm LED holders in them. The railings are painted silver. Notice I filled the holes where the railings were going to be located - I couldn't get the railings to fit in the holes properly and they fit nicely without the locator holes in any case.




Although I did a comprehensive dry fit before painting, when I tried to place the Moonliner it didn't fit on the stand locator plugs as well as I liked. I have removed the plugs and when sanded down I will place my own locator plugs to fit the Moonliner.