Thunderbirds and Angels weathering?

[lacrosse dad]

Hello all, Happy new year. Over the holidays I picked up a T-Bird F-4E, F-16 and an Angel's A-4 Skyhawk, all 1/72nd scale....Those birds are very well maintained, should I go with straight out of the spraying booth and decals right to display or is there some weathering someone can do?

 

[airdave]

Those planes are meticulously maintained and kept in pristine looking condition when flying.
Even the retired ones sitting outside in the weather look good!
I inspected carefully!
(lol yes, I know, its a museum)

 

[MJY65]

Those planes are meticulously maintained and kept in pristine looking condition when flying.

Not quite pristine unless it just came out of the paint shop. If you look at them carefully with a zoom lens or binoculars, the stenciling (vinyl, not paint) is often chipped or missing segments of letters. The Thunderbirds jets tend to show more yellowing of the white paint where exposed to hydraulic fluid for an extended time. Both suffer from areas cavitation burn on the radomes and control surfaces. From show line distance, they look perfect, but in reality are just "pretty dang clean".

That said, I've built them as pristine. It's the perfect image we have in our head that I'm trying to replicate.