Flight Deck

The flight deck fits pretty good and I didn't need to do much to get a good clean joint between the bulkheads and the bottom of the deck. I piled up some relatively heavy items onto the hull to make the joint tight. Applied liquid cement and let set overnight. For the angle deck support struts, I numbered each on the deck bottom with pencil since the instruction sheet can be a little confusing. Again, liquid cement was used to attach the struts. After all the cement dried I painted the underside of the flight deck Model Master Dark Ghost Grey to match the rest of the hull.

I painted the flight deck with Tamya Haze Grey Spray. This is a shade or two darker than the hull and closer to the way the ship looks in photos. The angled deck was masked off and sprayed with Tamya IJN Grey. This is slightly darker than the rest of the flight deck but will give me a straight line for decal application. To give the fight deck a used look pastels were rubbed onto the areas with the most heavy usage. The landing area and the elevators were rubbed with black pastel and the area next to the island structure was rubbed with brown pastel with a little black for darkening. After this Testors Glosscoat was sprayed on in preparation for decaling and to seal the pastel. If the pastel isn't sealed it gets on my fingers and subsequently, everywhere! It's important to get the stripes on the angled deck straight. If not this spoils the look of the model. For this reason I decided to forgo the decal stripe down the center of the angled deck and paint it instead. Long solid decals are almost impossible to get straight and keep straight after applying decal set. I lightly drew a straight line down the center and masked it off with Tamya masking tape. Model Master Camouflage Grey was painted on instead of white. White is too bright in these scales to look realistic. Again a little black pastel was rubbed on for that used look. The rest of the decals went on ok and Testors Dullcoat was sprayed on after overnight drying.