A-OK GB Pt. 8 and a tiding of great joy

The Hurricane update is a minor one. The weather here has gotten cold and rainy, and since our house, like most in south China, has no heat, conditions are not good for painting--I get condensation on the plastic, which wreaks havoc with airbrushing. But before the damp got too bad, I did manage to spray the topside with Gunze water-based "Dark Earth":



And since I don't want to risk more painting right now, I got fidgety and took one of the underwing masks off to see how the roundels came out:



Obviously still needs the red center, but not too bad! Would look cool as Australian, no?

Another thing to deal with is the canopy. JP has very kindly sent me some Bare Metal Foil to try masking it, but I'm still waiting on our sloooow postal service. In the meantime I'm flirting with the idea of using strips of decals, and as a first step have made a rubbing of the frames onto masking tape:



I intend to use this as a template to slice curved strips of decal using two X-Acto blades spaced and taped together. Ironic that I should paint on the markings to avoid decals, and then use decals instead of paint on the canopy. But then maybe this won't work and I'll mask and paint it after all, as soon as China Post delivers.

And for the tidings of great joy, I'm a grandpa! Our oldest daughter had her first child about two hours ago, a little girl. Everyone is doing fine--although I now know for sure that I'm ooooooold!

Stuart