If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong.

Trumpeter 1/48 JL-9- Dig Those Groovy Colors, Man

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I’ve finished up the office on the JL-9. I think half the reason I’m doing this model is because of the cool turquoise color they paint the cockpit on this one. It’s really unusual.

The cockpit is nicely detailed- lots of raised bits and doodads to paint. I kept this one pretty clean, using mostly a more Spanish style approach to highlight raised areas, rather than using dry brushing. I like it for doing cleaner work, I think. It’s not perfect, and I probably could have gone for a little more contrast, but I like the result anyway.

Except for the ejection seat pull handles, and microbeads used for the throttle knobs, it’s all out of the box.

Test fitting the cockpit into the fuselage resulted in a virtually Lego-like fit. I positioned the cockpit firmly into the right fuselage half, tilted the left half a bit to the side, aligned the lower part of the fuselages halves together, rotated the left half in- and everything slid perfectly in to place.

I’m really enjoying this kit. While Trumpeter (and Hobbyboss) may have some accuracy issues, I’ve never found fault in their engineering. They are a pleasent build experience to say the least.

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Comments

2 responses to “Trumpeter 1/48 JL-9- Dig Those Groovy Colors, Man”

  1. Hi,
    I picked up this kit recently and am curious as to what color (paint brand etc) you ended up settling on for the cockpit ? Was it out of the bottle or something you mixed up ? From memory Trumpeter calls for “light blue” which does not seem very accurate, at least not from pictures of the real JL-9 I have seen.
    cheers
    Gary

    1. Jon Bius

      Hi Gary,

      I used Vallejo Model Color Blue Green (70.808). While it wasn’t a spot on match for the colors I’d researched in images and video, it was close enough for my tastes. I airbrushed it out of the bottle, thinned with their own proprietary thinner.

      Thanks for reading my blog!

      Jon

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