Misawa

Hobby Boss F-80C Shooting Star – Painting

/ Matt Dyer / Leave a comment

A short entry today. I masked and painted over the past few days.

I am glad I cut some stencils, because I think trying to get that decal to conform with the forward fuselage may have bested me. And, I think it would have been too long anyway.

My chosen color was Vallejo Model Air Glossy Sea Blue (71.300). The brighter blue on the painting diagram looked nice, but in photos I have seen the color appeared to be darker. Also, I theorized that available paint stocks would have been darker like Insignia Blue which is very close or the same as Glossy Sea Blue.

I sprayed the nose and the rudder stripe area, and then I applied the masks I had made. To simplify painting, I left the horizontal stabilizers off.
The kit includes both standard wing tip tanks and the larger Misawa tanks. The F-80’s were stationed in Japan at Misawa AFB early in the Korean War, and there the larger wing tip tanks were apparently locally developed. It was a long way from Japan to the fighting as it moved north in Korea.
The masking has been removed on top and things are not looking too bad.

I think I will apply decals next and then a top coat to protect them. After that, some weathering will be in order.