Ok, here goes, this is my first article to ARC and my 3rd model thus far.  It's my first attempt at airbrushing the whole model and I tried quite a few new techniques on this bird.  Its kinda' actually incomplete, if you've seen some of my pictures in the in progress pics, you'd know why.  Approximate building time was 2 months, along the way, someone had to break my model, and I swore that day I could have killed someone lol.  Anyway, its was built OOB and I must say that when I opened the kit, I was very impressed with the parts inside, not to mention the decals which gave you a choice of 3 squadrons,VF-84 which I chose.  Kit was very well detailed, only thing I'd recommend changing would be the cockpit, other than that, its really good.

As mentioned, I tried a few new techniques. One of which was pre-shading, the only weathering I did on this model.  I was quite satisfied with the results, although I felt weathering was a bit light on a navy bird.  Also, airbrushing required a lot of masking, compared to brush painting on my first two models.  Cockpit had a lot of fit issues, and I wasn't really satisfied with how it turned, but its ok.  I made a mistake with the gears, I airbrushed it while it was on the sprues, and it was a pain getting them to stay in place because of the paint on it, not to mention white paint.  Gear doors also did not want to stay in its place.  Oh well,....the ways of the newbie....lol.