More CF work

Another 5 hours spent on CF decals. All I've done is finish sides and internals of cockpit and worked on external surface of the roof. Gaps will not be visible when body panels are attached in place. So much effort and work is needed for those CF decals. Hope it will make some difference in the end.

Main livery decals completed

Applied many more main livery decals over weekend. Good news is that I've completed most challenging ones and only few small decals are left to add. Had to do some mock assembly to be able to align doors and side body panels, so I could apply those big overlapping "FINA" decals. Also almost finished front hood. I had to do quite a bit of patching for decals over complex shapes. Luckily MFH included some spare colour stripes and I had left over white decals from F248 kit. Overall I'm happy with result.

MFH decals are very good quality, but even MFH provides flat decals, which supposed to cover curved surfaces. I had issues on those red stripes of American flag. Decals just wouldn't lay flat over curved fender's surfaces. It's not that visible from a distance and hopefully clear coat will mask those wrinkles a bit more. However I can never understand why kit makes keep making flat decals for highly curved surfaces. Not amount of Micro-Sol can solve my issues. I've seen only one kit - Studio27 MP4/27, where they actually changed shape of flat red decals to conform better to highly curved side pods.

CF work and start of main livery

Finally an update after almost a month. I hadn't had much time available for modeling during that period, only about 4 hours per week. Most if that time was spent on applying CF decals to monocoque and front structures. I've used SMS transparent CF decals, twill weave and pain weave. Transparent CF for front structures and brake ducts. Most of the monocoque is covered in plain weave, except for the floor. I've decided on use plain weave on floor panels, as seen on some references. Besides that gives a bit of a variety too.

Past weekend I've decided to take a break from CF and apply some livery decals instead. Started with rear and side panels. Only in about 4 hours I've completed almost a third of whole livery. That gives out an idea on how much effort goes into those CF application jobs. But in the end CF decals make model look quite a bit better and provide enough satisfaction to justify whole ordeal. Decals job for the small central roof piece, front bonnet and doors is more challenging. Between doors and lower side panels I have to align and split big white "FINA" decals, which also must conform to ridges on doors. On the front bonnet couple of decals actually overlap onto front lamp covers and that posses a requirement to finish front lights first. So, next update could take longer to appear because I will need to solve these challenges first.

One more challenge is represented by internal door panels. I've attempted to cover them with one piece of CF and failed. Even SMS CF decals aren't flexible and stretchable enough to conform to complex shape. I plan to use multiple pieces for my next attempt.

Here are some photos of current state of things.