A Wild Goose Chase (Area 88)

The finished model:

The scene:

Having been discharged from his mercenary contract with the Royal Asran Air Force, after successfully transported King Zak into exile in France, Shin is at somewhat of a loss as to what to do with himself.  He discovers that after flying daily combat missions, easing back into civilian life is a lot harder to do than he thought.  The only thing that helps his “withdrawal” symptoms is watching the Patrouille de France (the National French Aerobatics team) planes flying at the nearby airbase.

When his voyeurism comes to the attention of Lt. Col. Laurent Bosch – himself an ex-mercenary – he invites Shin in for a chat. Over a cup of coffee, he explains that mercenaries are often called Wild Geese, because the migration means only the strongest among them will survived.  He then invites Shin to be their “special guest” and participate in the day’s training exercise.

Check out the original manga scene from Chapter 097 “The Whisper of a Lonely Sky” here:

The story:

Although Shin only flies the SEPECAT Jaguar once in the manga, it comes at somewhat of a pivotal point in the story – where Shin realizes that, despite what he’s been telling himself all this time, he really IS just a mercenary hooked on a life of action and danger.  The chapter also clearly shows the different mentality between pilots who engage in showy acrobatics and those who face actual combat regularly.

Besides… there’s not that many chances to paint up such colourful jets, so why wouldn’t I include it in my 1/144 Area 88 project?

The kit:

• SEPECAT Jaguar by Academy x 4

The build:

I have to say, this was one of the more difficult builds I’ve done as part of my 1/144 Area 88 project.  Not because it was particularly difficult to achieve, but mainly because a) the kit, being relatively old, is a bit soft on the details, and b) I had to do everything four times (at least).

Putting it together was relatively quick.  By now I’ve got the whole “adding LED lights for afterburners” system down pat, so even having to get 8 bulbs wired up, went pretty quickly.  However the area on the bottom of the fuselage, just ahead of the engines, has some terrible sink marks, so I decided to just add a bit of styrene to cover it rather than trying to putty and sand that monster 4 times in a row.

I also had some trouble with the tail fins. Despite being part of the fuselage half, it’s a relatively weak spot on the kit, and with excessive handling, I managed to break it off at least three times.  Truth be told, I’m not sure if it was the exact same one three times, or if it was multiple planes breaking off once – I kinda got lost in the three card monty shuffle.

The biggest challenge on this project was really the masking and painting.  It seemed pretty simple and straightforward, but after painting the fuselage all white, and then masking off the areas for red and painting them… then masking off the areas for blue and painting them… and then masking the roundels… and then the red touch ups… then the blue… then the white… well, it was almost more than my sanity was worth.  The only real solution I found was just to mask up 1-2 planes per session and then move on to something else.  It took longer by several days, but it’s not really a race, now is it?

In the end, it wasn’t perfect.  Despite my attempts at careful masking, there was always some bleed through, but at a certain point, you just need to call it “done.”  They panel washing was perhaps a bit heavy and accented the deep panel lines perhaps a bit too much for some people’s tastes, but given that I’m really trying to portray a scene from a B&W manga page – well, I think it just accents the “cartoon” aspects of it.

One final note, it’s a bit hard to see the engine lights given the final staging on the base, but I know they’re there… so mission accomplished.  I pretty satisfied with the result, but feel free to tell me what you think.