zaxos345

That looks great, the NMF and the weathering look right just to me.
 
Cheers
 
Dennis

Myself I was not originally too fond of Japanese aircraft. I bought the kit because I was curious about the new technology of model-making and wanted to discover the shapes of things to come. But then I became gradually infatuated.
Like they said in a famous song, ‘if you cannot be with the one you love, love the one you’re with’. 

@zaxos345 Thanks John! Glad you like it. 
 
Trust me Dennis. The interior is just an appetizer. The main course comes with the exterior, camouflage and weathering. The Kate is one of the airplanes who wears her backstory on her skin. The same Kate in PH will look different whether she’s in the Ceylon raid or at Midway some months later. Specialists are still battling among themselves. 
 
Hey, what would we do without temptation? 
 
A glimpse of what’s in store…

 
Cheers,
Quang

Good morning gents,
I finished weathering the ''lady'', put on her shoes, the external tanks, wrapped up all the details and bits and i am presenting her to you!!
Hope you like it!!
I really loved my journey with her!!!
More here...
 
 

 







 









 
Thanks a lot, 
really appreciate any comment!!
 
John
 

Superb build John, the NMF looks spot on.  Thank you for the history as well.
 
Ernest

Good morning,
I finnally finished the Tamiya's 1/32 P-51D as the P-51D-5 "Little Eva III", Capt. James "Sully" Varnell, 52nd Fighter Group, 2nd Fighter Squadron, Italy, 1944.
James "Sully" Varnell was the MTO's third-ranking ace with 17 victories and ranked as number 10 among Mustang aces. This little-known ace scored all of his 17 victories within 67 days, making him one of the fastest-scoring aces ever. Tour expired, he's rotated home to train other pilots while Dalebroux & Jones became Lt. Hans Zachmann's men. Killed in a Flying Accident 9 April, 1945, near Pinellas Field, Florida. Varnell is the 10th ranked Mustang Ace of WW2.
In progress here...
 
 
 































 







 
Hope you like it, really appreciate any comments!!!
 
John

Some good progress tonight. Got the 'tub' pretty much finished.
 
First without control panel:
 

 
Looking at these photos, I'm not entirely satisfied with how I've superglued the 'lap' belts on, so I may fiddle with that...
 
Having never tackled a Trumpeter kit before (though I have build one Hobbyboss Spitfire), it's not been too bad so far. Though that may be in contrast to the Revell P-51 I built previously, which was a beast!

Good morning,
I finnally finished the Tamiya's 1/32 P-51D as the P-51D-5 "Little Eva III", Capt. James "Sully" Varnell, 52nd Fighter Group, 2nd Fighter Squadron, Italy, 1944.
James "Sully" Varnell was the MTO's third-ranking ace with 17 victories and ranked as number 10 among Mustang aces. This little-known ace scored all of his 17 victories within 67 days, making him one of the fastest-scoring aces ever. Tour expired, he's rotated home to train other pilots while Dalebroux & Jones became Lt. Hans Zachmann's men. Killed in a Flying Accident 9 April, 1945, near Pinellas Field, Florida. Varnell is the 10th ranked Mustang Ace of WW2.
In progress here...
 
 
 































 







 
Hope you like it, really appreciate any comments!!!
 
John

Excellent modeling in every way my friend!  As mentioned by others above, your painting is exceptional and I'm jealous of your oil vent stain on the starboard side.  I tried to replicate that on my Mustang and it doesn't look half as good, or as convincing, as yours.
 
Cheers,
Chuck

Exceptional as always Chuck!!!! 
 
John

February 1/24
February already?  I’ve been modeling close to a month now and I’m only starting to feel comfortable with all things plastic, resin and paint again.  After taking a modeling hiatus for a year, simple things like paint mix ratios, airbrush pressures and gluing techniques had left me, but it’s all coming back to me now.  For instance, I know that with a certain airbrush and type of paint I need the air pressure regulator to be about “there”, without even reading what the numbers are.  With a few paint splatters and quick adjustments, I figured it out in a hurry! 
 
One small item I didn’t mention earlier is the HUD, which is the earlier version for this Block 25, which is the one supplied with the kit using parts using parts N4, N5 and the clear part L1.  The Aires version at the bottom is just the sides of the HUD glass with no overlap on top of the glass, which is more accurate.  Further, gluing clear parts to metal can be a nightmare, especially when using CA glue, so I opted to use the kit HUD instead, by cutting off the side portions from parts N4 and N5.

 
Here it is assembled and carefully glued with Tamiya extra thin cement instead, leaving no glue marks.  More on this below.
 

It's finally time to paint the Aires landing gear bays and cockpit, which I always start with gloss white and black respectively.

 
I use Tamiya lacquer from a rattle can, but I’m sure the “LP” line of Tamiya lacquer paints in a bottle work just as well.  When that has dried, I applied a good coat of Tamiya X-22 acrylic clear gloss.  Why so much gloss black paint?
 
·        Many instrument panels are black to begin with
·        Black paint creates interesting shadow areas in areas hard to paint
·        I use a lot of cockpit decals, which need a smooth surface
·        Subsequent coats of enamel paint can be easily removed with solvent, if there is a protective layer of X-22
 

 
I did the same for the landing gear bays, only this time with white, with roughly the same logic as above.
 

 
To keep the black areas black, I applied a mask of Mr. Masking Sol Neo, which I find works really well when you need to remove it from small tight places after it dries.  Micro-Mask on the other hand, is almost impossible to remove from these same areas, so I never use it in cockpits.
 

 
This next pic is sad to me, because my extensive line of Model Master enamel paints are no longer made by Testors.  I use enamels in cockpits and landing gear bays, because painting flaws can easily be removed with solvent, which you can’t do with acrylics.  Thankfully I still have about 70 bottles of MM paint, although I didn’t have the exact F-16 color noted below, so I used Neutral Grey (FS36270) instead, which is really close.  After a little weathering, you’ll never notice the difference.
 

 
After carefully removed the liquid mask, most black areas came out looking pretty good, but there are always rough looking areas where the grey paint leaked underneath.  No worries, because a little solvent on a brush- with X-22 protecting the black lacquer underneath- removes these flaws easily.
 

 
The Aires kit comes with 4 pieces of acetate (1 small one missing below) that are perfectly clear, so you need to paint the back of them white, or you’ll never see the gauges against a dark background.  The Aires instructions, if you can call them that, don’t mention this critical step.
 

 
Using a very iterative procedure of painting certain areas grey and black, then correcting overlapping flaws, the margins of the black instrument panels become sharper.  The many switches and small dials were then painted using a plastic toothpick from an old microbrush.  After applying many tiny labeling decals, I then sprayed everything with Tamiya Flat Clear lacquer and added a few pastels here and there to make the cockpit look used.  I left a few of the smaller parts off for fear of breakage and loss, until final assembly.
 

 

 
The joystick and HUD are only dry fit for these pics and will be installed permanently at the end of the build.
 

 

 

That HUD might be a bit too high, so I'll likely drop it a mil or two by sanding the base before I glue it on.
 

 
With the coaming removed, you can see where I added some boot wear to the floor to match what I see in Jake Melampy’s Viper Guide, that shows clear chromate green exposed along the side of the deepest wear that looks dark grey/black.

As mentioned above I used lots of tiny cockpit decals, mostly from Airscale and Barracuda.  The P-51D decals from Barracuda are especially good for cockpits, because there’s lots of them with tiny plain white lettering that you can’t read anyway, which work very well on a black background.  The Airscale 1/32 Jet Cockpit Labels and Warnings (AS32) set will come in real handy when I paint the seat, as you will see soon enough.  Placement of the decals was a hit and miss affair to make things look busy, while trying to mimic some of the pics in Jake’s book.
 

 
A lot of what you see on the floor and rear wall will be hidden when the seat is installed, so I think I might leave the seat loose so that it can be removed later.  Speaking of the seat, I am NOT looking forward to using those Aires (or Tamiya) metal seat-belts.  How do you paint them, then insert them into sharp buckles without scraping off the paint?!
 

 
 
So that’s it for now guys.  It’s great to get passionate about modeling again, although my retirement is getting in the way of modeling again far too soon.  My wife and I are going on a 6-week cruise to New Zealand, Australia and Polynesia in a bit over 2 weeks, so there will be no more modeling during that time until April.  I’ll see what additional stuff I can get done to this Viper before that happens!
 
Cheers,
Chuck

Good morning,
I finnally finished the Tamiya's 1/32 P-51D as the P-51D-5 "Little Eva III", Capt. James "Sully" Varnell, 52nd Fighter Group, 2nd Fighter Squadron, Italy, 1944.
James "Sully" Varnell was the MTO's third-ranking ace with 17 victories and ranked as number 10 among Mustang aces. This little-known ace scored all of his 17 victories within 67 days, making him one of the fastest-scoring aces ever. Tour expired, he's rotated home to train other pilots while Dalebroux & Jones became Lt. Hans Zachmann's men. Killed in a Flying Accident 9 April, 1945, near Pinellas Field, Florida. Varnell is the 10th ranked Mustang Ace of WW2.
In progress here...
 
 
 































 







 
Hope you like it, really appreciate any comments!!!
 
John

Good morning,
I finnally finished the Tamiya's 1/32 P-51D as the P-51D-5 "Little Eva III", Capt. James "Sully" Varnell, 52nd Fighter Group, 2nd Fighter Squadron, Italy, 1944.
James "Sully" Varnell was the MTO's third-ranking ace with 17 victories and ranked as number 10 among Mustang aces. This little-known ace scored all of his 17 victories within 67 days, making him one of the fastest-scoring aces ever. Tour expired, he's rotated home to train other pilots while Dalebroux & Jones became Lt. Hans Zachmann's men. Killed in a Flying Accident 9 April, 1945, near Pinellas Field, Florida. Varnell is the 10th ranked Mustang Ace of WW2.
In progress here...
 
 
 































 







 
Hope you like it, really appreciate any comments!!!
 
John

Good morning,
I finnally finished the Tamiya's 1/32 P-51D as the P-51D-5 "Little Eva III", Capt. James "Sully" Varnell, 52nd Fighter Group, 2nd Fighter Squadron, Italy, 1944.
James "Sully" Varnell was the MTO's third-ranking ace with 17 victories and ranked as number 10 among Mustang aces. This little-known ace scored all of his 17 victories within 67 days, making him one of the fastest-scoring aces ever. Tour expired, he's rotated home to train other pilots while Dalebroux & Jones became Lt. Hans Zachmann's men. Killed in a Flying Accident 9 April, 1945, near Pinellas Field, Florida. Varnell is the 10th ranked Mustang Ace of WW2.
In progress here...
 
 
 































 







 
Hope you like it, really appreciate any comments!!!
 
John

Love the aluminum paint on the filled wings.

Wow! That looks real.

Really amazing Quang!!! 
 
John

Good morning,
I finnally finished the Tamiya's 1/32 P-51D as the P-51D-5 "Little Eva III", Capt. James "Sully" Varnell, 52nd Fighter Group, 2nd Fighter Squadron, Italy, 1944.
James "Sully" Varnell was the MTO's third-ranking ace with 17 victories and ranked as number 10 among Mustang aces. This little-known ace scored all of his 17 victories within 67 days, making him one of the fastest-scoring aces ever. Tour expired, he's rotated home to train other pilots while Dalebroux & Jones became Lt. Hans Zachmann's men. Killed in a Flying Accident 9 April, 1945, near Pinellas Field, Florida. Varnell is the 10th ranked Mustang Ace of WW2.
In progress here...
 
 
 































 







 
Hope you like it, really appreciate any comments!!!
 
John

Good morning,
I finnally finished the Tamiya's 1/32 P-51D as the P-51D-5 "Little Eva III", Capt. James "Sully" Varnell, 52nd Fighter Group, 2nd Fighter Squadron, Italy, 1944.
James "Sully" Varnell was the MTO's third-ranking ace with 17 victories and ranked as number 10 among Mustang aces. This little-known ace scored all of his 17 victories within 67 days, making him one of the fastest-scoring aces ever. Tour expired, he's rotated home to train other pilots while Dalebroux & Jones became Lt. Hans Zachmann's men. Killed in a Flying Accident 9 April, 1945, near Pinellas Field, Florida. Varnell is the 10th ranked Mustang Ace of WW2.
In progress here...
 
 
 































 







 
Hope you like it, really appreciate any comments!!!
 
John

Good morning,
I finnally finished the Tamiya's 1/32 P-51D as the P-51D-5 "Little Eva III", Capt. James "Sully" Varnell, 52nd Fighter Group, 2nd Fighter Squadron, Italy, 1944.
James "Sully" Varnell was the MTO's third-ranking ace with 17 victories and ranked as number 10 among Mustang aces. This little-known ace scored all of his 17 victories within 67 days, making him one of the fastest-scoring aces ever. Tour expired, he's rotated home to train other pilots while Dalebroux & Jones became Lt. Hans Zachmann's men. Killed in a Flying Accident 9 April, 1945, near Pinellas Field, Florida. Varnell is the 10th ranked Mustang Ace of WW2.
In progress here...
 
 
 































 







 
Hope you like it, really appreciate any comments!!!
 
John

Honestly, I hadn't checked in on this build in quite a while.  After seeing your "RFI" post, I had to come back and read through your entire thread.  Love the work on this one, from the extra work done to fix some issues to the final finish - a stunning build all around. 

Gorgeous Mustang!

Beautiful Mustang performance. Very realistic.

Beautiful finish , the overall look is spot on. Well done!
cheers
Martin

This looks amazing! 
 
Cheers,  Tom

DING DING DING, We have a winner!!