Well, after several weekends of doing nothing but applying tape, the last few days I was finally able to finish getting this Japanese aggressor scheme down. There are a few areas of touch-up but overall it came out pretty well. It is amazing how committed the JASDF is to stencils and panel numbers - after the EJ Kai and the F-2, this Eagle is just about as cluttered! After paint touch-ups and some gloss coat, I'll be ready to start down that long and winding road...
Here's a pic of he live Eagle:
WOW. Did you have to fabricate the masks?
yep - for the first pass of the curved lines to mask for the white against the grey, I drew out a design on a 1/72 scale drawing, then taped over the design, cut the tape with exacto and applied. To mask the orange and brown against the white was all straight edge, so just miles of tape pieced together to get the jagged pattern, orange first, then masked again for brown. You'll notice that some of the panel lines and lines between control surfaces were pre-masked as well with very thin tape. If you look at the pic of the real aircraft, some of the "masked" lines you see on the wings are actually decals, so I didn't have to mask those.
I must say you effort paid off nicely. Great work on a unique paint scheme.