Thank you Spiros @fiveten and John @johnb, I have been slowly plugging away at this build, while also planning my next two (I know, I should focus on this one). Because this particular Raiden will be chipped more than my last one, I will need to plan out where to spray hairspray, especially as I only want to limit it to the chipping areas and want to avoid areas that will be masked as the hairspray generally results in paint being pulled up with the tape. Next up is the hairspray and then marbling on the fuselage (I'm going to have to be creative with colours here, to get them to show up in the final top coat).

@holzhamer you have a point. Canopies/clear parts have always been a but daunting for me to mask/paint. I found the canopy frame rails to be a little faint on the M3, but they look nice on the M5, and my intent was to do some chipping on it. Ideally, I should mask the interior of the canopy, but don't have precut canopy masks to do that and it might be quite the challenge to do it with tape. It's also unfortunate that the canopy is closed (although I know there are vacuum canopies out there). If I had a spare I would attempt to cut this open.

Another productive night, although I feel I could have done this earlier in the painting process. Since this plane will be chipped quite a lot, I wanted to avoid masking over areas that had hairspray and then paint applied overtop as the tape usually pulls up the paint. So I decided to paint the upper hinomaru before the green.

I mixed up some pink primer to lay down first so that I would be able to get better coverage with the red paint. Then I applied the mask for the centre red disk, sprayed a white ring and applied the ring mask and some liquid mask to seal the gap between the two. Afterwards I sprayed mahogany coloured primer and then a coat of LP-11 silver.

What I should have done was do this process after the black primer was painted, and not after the silver. Oh well, I’ll remember this for next time

Finally, I gathered some paints that I will be using for the marbling tomorrow (after applying hairspray to the chipping areas)

9 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Very nicely done, Woody @wkubacki
Thanks for sharing this approach.

Seems indeed like a productive day, Woody @wkubacki
And what an amazing result you got on this Raiden.
Painting and chipping look superb.

A small seam has popped up again, so instead of painting the anti glare strip I focussed on the canopy. For reasons unknown to me, the canopy frame seemed to chip/flake off a lot.

I created some masks for the canopy, they didn’t fit perfectly so I had to add a bit of washi tape (MT brand, made in Japan off of Amazon). Then a light coat of tire black, then silver (LP-11), hairspray, RC 305, and finally a dip in some water to activate the hairspray.

I am really digging the contrast between the dark green and the silver of the frame.

8 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Looks fantastic, my friend @wkubacki!
The canopy "extra" flaking might have to do with the silver base reaction with the canopy material, so the green would adhere weaker than the rest of the model?

Looks super, my friend @wkubacki!