Right, fairings on and brush painted with Humbrol 34, not an exact match, but it'll do for this:
For some reason I thought to myself before I took them off the sprue "shall I paint them white on the sprue?" and the answer to that was no. Wrong answer Mike! It would have looked a lot better painted on the sprue as there's overflow onto the decal which makes it blatantly obvious it's not the same colour, but for my purposes it'll do.
Plane is as done as I'm going to do:
So I have worked out how to get the decal and fairings down and it look ok. Should have done better and painted on the sprue. This plane is actually a really good build, there's loads of detail on this and whilst I should have filled a bit on the nose to smooth that out, that's the only area of the entire plane that doesn't fit well.
It was worth having another crack at this as it was only a couple of quid on sale. I'm actually waiting for delivery of the 50th anniversary edition of this plane (http://www.airfix.com/shop/raf-red-arrows/raf-red-arrows-hawk-50th-display-season-starter-set-1-72.html). On that one I'll take more care and be more diligent!
Lessons learnt:
1) This needs white primer. I used black here, but the wheel bays should actually be a more white colour.
2) Do not put the fairings on when the destructions tell you to
3) Paint the fairings on the sprue
4) Whilst I did a good job of masking the canopy, there's a clear part that goes inside I could not figure out where it goes, but that's white too so needs to be there. Figure it out!
5) Liquid Poly is a good product
So apologies to Airfix, this is a great kit, if you ignore the fairings ;-)