Here is the result after chipping with salt and hairspray. Decals are applied afterwards.Following the landing gear alignment i’ll go on with a semi gloss coat and begin with the fading, sadly all the preshading was in vain, dunno why; might be the Gunze lacquer being too potent or the color itself is unforgiving, but no matter what the preshading went away. I post shaded with various grays and then went over with a highly diluted basecolor, same result, all the work has vanished… if it can be liven up via oils remains to be seen.
WiP Hellcat – chipping and decals complete

The chipping looks pretty beaten-up… someone’s going to get in trouble in maintenance 🙂 Do you have a favorite hairspray-brand? I had one that worked well (did not bother to check which one when I had it), but since then I’ve tried two types, and none of them performed as well as the first one. That convinced me to switch to AK’s product- at least it’s consistent…
this one has a brand but it’s irrelevant, i bought it from the discount store – cheapest one. i am happy with it, but i am decanting and applying via airbrush in light coats – otherwise it’s reacting with the underlying paint. also it’s been almost a day now and i can still activate it with water despite many many layers of paint and clear atop it.