Great progress, Harvey.@scalerambush
What a nice flight you had in that Rapide, beautiful weather and from the beautiful airfield of Duxford.

Another update, motivation is returning now that it's down to the spraying. Here's what's happened today.

Firstly the model received a mix of paints, MRP Light Ghost Grey FS36375 (refered as LGG) was sprayed on the entirety of the undersides, followed by a mix of MRP LGG + approximately 15% Tamiya XF-1 White, followed by LGG + approx. 30% XF-1, then a highly diluted mix of XF-1 in some specific places, finally a mix of LGG and approx 10% XF-2 black was sprayed over most of the panel lines.

Next up was to tone down the colours, I sprayed straight LGG over the model particularly focusing on the overly dark panel lines. Some people on the interwebs are now calling this process 'intershading', as you shade in between coats of the base colour, but in my eyes it's just good old fashioned post-shading with corrections were required.

I do think it's borderline too dark still, so any opinions are appreciated. Ultimately I'm a bit of a issue of 'model vs reality', the real airframe is a nice shiny CAG bird, some paint fading and retouching here and there but nothing major, but then I want to make something more interesting to paint and look at. I won't be going full F-14D Super Tomcat at the end of its retirement dirtiness, but still more weathered than not.

Oh, and a little patch of Dark Ghost Grey (DGG) was painted behind the RIO. Some people on my social media are still saying this is the wrong approach, and the sides should be entirely DGG, but I just plain can't see that on the images.

Fully agree on the comments of George.
Most important is that you should go for the result you most like.
And looking at the picture, I think you are dealing with it the correct way.

Thank you folks! Ultimately it may be 'wrong' but it doesn't look like the source image is 'right' if that's the case. Still thinking of toning down the shading slightly, but I'm going to go ahead and get the rest of the paint on the fuselage upper side and then see what it looks like completed before toning it down so more.

Got through a lot of paint on this kit already...

Evening folks, a few updates to share.

Firstly thank you for the feedback, I ended up toning down some of the weathering a tad, not a clean as the photos but not as noticeable as before. I also notably painted the upperside of the fuselage in its Blue-Grey with the previous weathering method, and then today spent far too long masking and gave it a black roof.

As you can see, the underside weathering was toned down particularly in the areas it was the most heavy which was by the Sparrow racks and the engines. I also toned down some of the parts that were far too much white.

The upperside got the same treatment as before, base then lighten then darken then base. This turned the extremely over the top panel lines from this:

To this, which is more reasonable.

And of course the black canopy and such. I was originally planning on painting the parts of the tail on the fuselage black as well as the 'fins' under each engine, but it took me way too long to mask the canopy to the right shape so I've painted this and will do the other parts another time. I used MRP black for this which is, unsurprisingly, really good to work with. I also noticed I gave the F-14 an extra antenna that the A has, but the B (at least this particular one) lacks, so this was quickly cut off and sanded down leaving some white primer showing. This'll be repainted later.

Next up is to paint the wings and elevators, as well as the rest of the black on the fuselage. The vertical stabilisers will be painted yellow where needed and then recieve the black but that's likely to be a later job.

4 additional images. Click to enlarge.

I also agree with our friend @johnb, Harvey!
Looking great so far!

Evening folks, thanks for the kind words, over the last few days I've got a few extra bits done.

Firstly the black on the parts of the fins that are on the fuselage were painted black, as were the little fins under the fuselage. These aren't perfect and could do with some touch ups but I think that's where it's time to break out the brush.

The wings and elevators are the primary focus at the moment, the underside colour was blocked in and weathered and the upper side colour also was painted on but is awaiting some tonal weathering.

It's starting to look a lot more complete with the black on and with coloured wings.

Next up is to finish of those wings and elevators, the topside will be finished easy enough and then I'll mask off the leading edge which should be a metallic colour, Tamiya calls for TS-17 Gloss Aluminum. If there is one thing I really dislike about Tamiya it's the incessant colour call outs with spray cans rather than their regular paint line, regardless I'm sure I have a paint laying around that will work as a fine substitute.


Work also began on the vertical stabilisers, the yellow was painted on and this will then be masked off so the black can be applied. To make my life that little bit more annoying a black stripe will need to go through the yellow, but I'm sure I can manage.

Oh, I also need to paint the exhaust housing black, more masking and painting black required!