The Jaguar is one of those aircraft that hasn't really featured much in my modelling activities over the years.  In fact, the last time I built one was back in 1977, when the revised Airfix kit first came out.  Naturally, although I'd not built any for nearly 30 years, this hadn't stopped me accumulating a variety of kits, decals & accessories.
The Jaguar's a bit like the F-14 & F-15 in my mind, since I remember it entering service & therefore regard it as a modern aircraft. Incredibly, it's been in service with the RAF for some 33 years & is only now finally retiring.  It's been a part of my life throughout much of that time, from my first sight of the aircraft of 6 & 54 Squadrons sat on the pan at RAF Coltishall when I visited the station with the Air Cadets back in 1976, through appearances at various airshows in the 80s & 90s to the afternoon Catherine & I spent  a couple of summers back leaning on one of the crash gates at Coltishall watching the aircraft taking off & landing, so I figured it was about time I finally got some built.  This is the first of a planned seven models in 1/72, assuming I don't lose interest part way through .  The plan is for 2 more RAF aircraft ( a GR1 from Operation Granby & one of the four specially marked GR3s from the Coltishall Wing in 2005), single seaters from Nigeria & Oman, a trainer from Ecuador & an Indian maritime strike aircraft.  

The Airfix Jaguar isn't the best of the kits available & is a typical Airfix kit of the 1970s, with raised panel lines & a lack of detail in the cockpit & wheelwells, but it's reasonably priced, readily available, builds up nicely enough & comes with a good selection  of useful stores, especially in the latest GR3 boxing which has an extra sprue of more modern weapons.  The only slightly annoying feature is that it only comes with one droptank, whereas RAF aircraft (except during Operation Granby) usually carry a pair on the inboard pylons.  Fortunately, I never throw anything away, so my spares box still contained the unused tank from the kit I build back in '77.  To be fair, of course, it should be pointed out that this one tank is one more than you got from Hasegawa, Heller, Matchbox or Frog in their single seaters &, unlike the ones in the Italeri kit, it is at least the right shape & size.  For some reason, the only kit in 1/72 which actually gives you a pair of accurate tanks is the Hasegawa T2.  Since the kit was designed to be built solely as an RAF GR1, it's simpler to assemble than the Hasegawa & Italeri offerings, both of which have multi-part fuselage halves, so it all went together pretty easily, though required a good bit of filling & sanding round the wingroots.  Sadly, I made more work for myself than was actually necessary - the wings feature an extended wingroot leading edge, which I lovingly filled & sanded to fair it into the fuselage side.  Some time later, I was reading a set of Modeldecal instructions & found, to my considerable chagrin, that these extensions must have been a feature of the prototype or something & weren't fitted to the production airframes, leaving me the "fun" of removing them, reshaping the wingroots & cleaning up the fuselage sides.
Once the airframe was complete, I sprayed the fin & spine with a Halfords Ford Radiant Red aerosol, painted the area under the tail in Alclad & then masked off for the camouflage.  My normal method with 1/72 scale RAF wraparound camo aircraft is to spray the Dark Sea Grey & then brush paint the Dark Green, which makes life MUCH simpler.  The camo pattern is so complex that the masking is an absolute nightmare if you elect to spray the green, especially so in this case since I fitted a C Scale recce pod & all the wing pylons before paint.
Once everything was painted & glossed up, it was decal time.  The decals were Xtradecal, apart from the ejection seat & pylon warning triangles.  I tried those on the Xtradecal sheet, some from Fantasy Printshop, those from the kit sheet & 3 lots from the spares box & all were out of register, so eventually had to pillage the sheet in a Hasegawa Jaguar.  Once this problem was resolved, the rest of the decaling went smoothly enough apart from the white stripes along the base of the spine & across the fin - those on the fin were way too long, needing some delicate trimming once they'd dried, & those down the spine were too short & needed extending with some spare white decal stripe, suggesting that whichever Jaguar kit Hannants designed the decals to fit, it wasn't this one !!   The spine stripes also took a fair amount of effort & decal softener to get them down properly,
but I got there in the end.  

Finally, I gave the model a sealing gloss coat, fitted the undercarriage & droptanks, matt coated the whole airframe, demasked the screen & fitted the pre-painted seat & canopy. As I said previously, the Airfix kit isn't the best available, but it's certainly built up ok & I'm very happy with the result. 

John