Thunnus

Wow, another incredible build! You and Tomas seem to be taking turns raising the bar on enhancing the Tamiya P-51 kit!

Incredible. Really no other words to say except... incredible.

Looks great! I really like how the wheel wells and landing gear legs turned out!

Nice paint slinging, Woody! I ALWAYS break that antenna post on top of the tail!

Ahhh... that makes sense given the proximity to the radiator! Thank you!

Thanks guys! Still nervous about the nose/fuselage connection and haven't quite figured that out but I am adjusting as I go and hopefully it will turn out acceptably. As mentioned in my previous update, the rear bottom corner of the cockpit cage was interfering with the sit of the upper wing flap assembly. After wasting hours of slowly grinding and scraping away, I realized it would much quicker just to SNIP the material off with my sprue cutters. The upper wing flap assembly can now sit without interference. To test the fit of the exhaust tips, I glued them into the engine block with white glue. But they immediately busted off when coming into contact with the nose piece. Didn't need the whole row to check fit so I glued the first and last exhaust tip in each row with CA glue. Seems just squeeze into the provided openings. I think I'll need to provide a bit more space in front of that leading exhaust pipe. And yeah, they are getting scratched up with the pre-fitting so I'll probably have to repaint them at some point. I just wanted to point out the complexity of the engine assembly by showing these instructions. To Special Hobby's credit, the fit of the engine parts has been very good and they have a provided many of the pipes and fluid lines as separately cast resin parts. Instructions aren't crystal clear but usually, if you check closely, most parts have some sort of positive connection in the form of a tab or pin. One of the thicker lines is a pair of segmented pipes that I wanted to try and fit. Avoid the temptation of trying to snip these types of parts off with a sprue cutter. A razor saw is recommended. One of the casting runners looked different than the others so I didn't cut it off until I verified that it was indeed not a necessary component. Here are the two pipes that have been carefully cleaned up. Here is how they fit onto the engine block. In this case, both ends of the pipe fit into openings provided on the engine block even though these openings are not shown in the instructions... you just have to look carefully and find them. There is a fuel fill port on the front of the engine cover that is not molded onto the kit plastic and I was curious to see if it was present on the resin part... nope. So I scribed one. I also added a piece of sheet styrene with a hole punched out on the interior side to match.

Ahhh... good to know! Thank you for that information! Ok, let's jump over to the engine now! The Napier Sabre engine is beautifully cast by CMK and is almost a model by itself with many parts. Technically, it is not the full engine and displays a top 3/4 view of the engine from above. There is also a full engine for the Tempest offered by CMK for the more ambitious. One of the earlier things I've done is to replace some of the molded ignition wiring with copper wires. You can also see the support arms on the engine bulkhead that help it stand in place. The bulkhead had some small resin latches and wiring added per the instructions. This is the most complicated sub--assembly that goes on top rear of the engine. Slowly, the individual components of the engine are added. Most of the larger parts have keyed attachment tabs that make for a positive fit. I am taking a pause here. There are more parts to add but they are mostly hydraulic or electrical lines. The rear bulkhead is a key connection point to the fuselage so I am trying to plan the construction order in terms of painting and assembly. Do I put paint on the engine now and then add the hydraulic lines and wiring afterwards? Or do I assemble it completely and paint afterwards? The exhausts are obviously an important component of the engine. Based on the instructions, I think I'll have to cut each pair of exhaust stacks from their casting blocks and attach them individually. So it would be easier to paint them now and glue them in later. The exhausts were first given a coat of Alclad Steel straight onto the resin without a black base coat. I then give a light coat of Alclad Exhaust Manifold, which gives the exhausts a nice burnt brownish tone. I mixed up a combination of Tamiya Flat Red and Flat Red Brown to create a rusty shade and used that to dry brush onto the exhausts. Finally, I use my airbrush and shoot a highly thinned black mixture up into and around the exhaust openings, isolating each individual exhaust with a Post-It. After the paint dries, I'll cut the exhausts from the casting block and give them a test fit. I need to see how the exhaust tips fit in relation to the corresponding openings in the nose part.

Thanks Michael! Thanks Matt! Not sure how the engine will turn out but I'm going to have to paint it after assembly. Which means a lot of the engine will be difficult to or out of reach. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it! Thanks for dropping by, John! A profile of a Sea Fury was posted in Chuck540z3's Tempest build that I am referring to... I am assuming that the Sea Fury is simply a naval version of the Tempest. Just a few updates before I jump to the engine. Here is one of the wing tip lights. The clear parts have an annoying sink mark/bubble in the middle of each that I can't really do anything about. When trimming the opening, I cut away too much and had to replace some material with sheet plastic. I trimmed some of the wing/fuselage contact areas to make sure that the fuselage is not pushing the wings outward, creating an unintended anhedral in the wings. Since the cross section tapers uniformly from wing root to wing tip, the zero angle on the bottom means that the top of the wings slope downward slightly, giving the impression of anhedral. I can fix the wing bottoms but not the wing tops, unfortunately. Added some fitting shims to increase contact area of the wing/fuselage joints. Dry-fitting the flaps has revealed a previously undetected issue... the rear corners of the cockpit cage interfere with the corners of the upper wing flaps. Some surgery is going to be required. That's it for now... next update we'll have a closer look at the resin engine components.

Thank you Dennis! No yellow! I've been cleaning up the wings and with that almost done, I tried another dry-fit of the engine-bearing front fuselage. The engine bulkhead has two supporting posts that I glued in and they really help keep it upright in the correct position. The fit isn't great but it's getting better as the big assemblies get permanently attached with glue. There are some gaps that worry me because I need every inch of contact area to make a solid join but I'm feeling better about it. I think I'm getting a little anhedral on the wings so I'll see if I can make some sanding adjustments to make sure the wing bottoms are flat. Since the flaps are already painted and the fit looks ok, I think I'm going to attach them after all of the major painting is done. It will save on some masking and reduce the potential for damage. I think I'm ready to start looking more carefully at the engine now. I think it will need to be assembled and painted prior to attachment of the nose to the fuselage.

Thanks Alan! Here is one of the underwing drop tanks. Pretty sparse attachment detail, which normally would not be an issue but since the pylons are actually clear, some fuel connection lines might be needed. Using what few references, I could find, I fashioned some fuel hoses using copper wire. No room to route the lines around the rear attachment point so I drilled a hole through it. Not perfectly accurate but it's an improvement. Futzing around with the still detached nose section, I thought that the kit part for the radiator exit flap actuator was way too thick and I also didn't like how far open it held the flap. So I am going to substitute a thinner brass tube and shorten it so the flap is not open so wide. There is also some sort of straight antenna on the belly that looks too thick to me. Haven't found a suitable replacement yet but it will be replaced. Was it normally painted yellow? I finally glued the upper wings to the lower wing section, making sure I lopped on some tube glue along the top edges of the wheel well walls to get them to seat properly. I also remembered to put in the dual lens wing light. Some time will be spent cleaning up the joints but it's a good step forward.

Thanks guys! I appreciate the positive comments very much! Gives me fuel to keep going! Not much of an update as today was more of a looking/thinking type of session. Still trying to figure out the engine attachment sequence and I'm taking a look at the wing drop tanks with their weird clear pylons and trying to decide if I want to use them. Playing around with one of the pylon parts resulted in a crack but Special Hobby said that a new clear sprue is on its way so I may still be in business. The outsides of the flaps and landing gear covers have been painted, given a brown pastel wash and then sealed with a flat coat. Not sure how I am going to weather the undersides of this Tempest so I'm holding off on weathering these for now. I can flip the gear covers over and paint the interior sides and weather them if I need something to work on. The clear lamps on the tail were glued into place. Not the greatest fit here so I had to do some sanding and get them flush. Obviously, these will have to be masked prior to painting. The windscreen, with the gun sight secured, has been glued into place. I'll give this a coat of black and then clean up the joint to make it nice and tidy.

Fantastic work! The wiring work, especially in the wheel wells, is impressively complex!

Wow... great detective work on the belly tank connection! I'm sure it will look that much more authentic as a result!

Thank you Kevin! I used the windscreen to manually trace a mask that can be used to help seal the cockpit prior to painting. The clear parts have been masked. The Special Hobby kit comes with masks but they are of the black vinyl variety ala Montex, which I do not trust. I much prefer the yellow Tamiya-style tape that Eduard uses for its masks. So I used the kit mask as a template and cut new masks on a Tamiya Tape sheet using the Silhouette Portrait Cutter. I had trouble getting the gun sight mount to fit within the windscreen. This is probably my doing... the resin part had both of its forward pointing braces broken off and I cut off the braces from the plastic part to replace. Most likely the orientation was wrong. Anyways, I snapped off those braces and replaced them with sections of brass tubing, which were sized and placed AFTER the gun sight mount was temporarily glued with PVA glue. The gun sight assembly was then removed and the glue joints reinforced with CA glue. I repainted the arms black to help hide the glue joint and glued the gun sight back into the windshield permanently. I've elected not to paint the interior frames of the canopy and windshield but have masked painted the exposed edge of the windshield black. The outer surfaces of the landing gear covers have been painted Medium Sea Grey (Mr Color C363) lightened with some white.over my normal black mottle preshade. Additional weathering has been applied to the wheel wells. First, I gave it some light chipping by dry-brushing Testors Silver along exposed edges and bolt heads. And then a watered-down mix of brown pastel wash was splattered into the wheel well. Subtlety is the key here and any obviously big spots of wash are wiped away.

I'm glad you've decided to continue on with this project. Your work is truly reference material grade with the amount of research that is conducted and shared with us lucky followers! Always jaw-dropping to see!

Thanks guys! I really appreciate the positive comments! Thank you Alan! I have a set to try out on my next Dora build but I hadn't realized they made a set for the Tempest. I opted to get the HGW transfers for the Tempest instead so we'll be using those to replace the kit stencil decals. I decided to glue the rear deck behind the cockpit. There is a gap between the seat supports and the back of the seat so I added some small plastic shims to bridge the distance. The wheel wells were given a dark brown pastel wash. This took much longer than normal because of all of the stuff in the wheel wells that I had to work around. Extra attention was making sure to eradicate any telltale stains and to repair any paint damaged by the wash operation. A flat coat was applied to seal the deal and I temporarily mounted some of the landing gear components in place for these pics. Weathering is not quite done on the wheel wells but they are close to being finished.

Thanks guys! I appreciate the comments and have noted the tips on the aluminum tape. I stained the tires a bit more with some drops of tan pastel wash. If you do this on a flat coat, the wash dries and creates light-colored tide marks on the tire. Gently wipe them off with a moist paper towel but not completely. If you do this several times, you start building some subtle but discrete staining that removes that airbrushed look on the tires. The gear legs were painted in White Aluminum, given a pastel wash and then a flat coat. The aluminum tape strips were replaced after painting and I liked the way the the aluminum tape contrasted with the color of the legs that I left them unpainted. Here are the tires posed on the landing gear legs. I bit the bullet and painted the wiring in the wheel wells. It actually was not as difficult as I thought it was going to be. Fairly good access to all of the wiring at this stage and the walls gave me great resting spots for my fingers to steady the brush. I stayed with greys and browns here, lacking any concrete references. After painting is completed, I'll seal it with a gloss goat and then give certain accessible areas a pastel wash.

Really interested in this one! Hopefully Italeri puts it’s A-team on this one being an Italian aircraft.

Thanks guys! I appreciate the comments! Using thin strips of aluminum tape, I've added straps to the brake lines at the locations where I have the brass tubing. I have a hard time cutting really thin strips of this aluminum tape without it wrinkling like an accordion. I thought I had smoothed it out but after a coat of White Aluminum on the gear legs, the straps still looks a bit wrinkly so I may have to address. The wheel well bays were given a base coat of black and then Interior Green on top of that. Gonna jump in there and do some detail painting but am not looking forward to working in those tight quarters! The wheel hubs were painted White Aluminum and then masked off. . The tires were painted a mixture of Red Brown and Black. A lighter tan color was added to the mix in stages and this was applied to the contact surface of the tire in subsequent layers. After the base colors, I painted the white alignment marks and gave the wheels a dark pastel wash. This is what the tires look like after a flat coat. There is still one more round of weathering that I am going to perform. The flap interiors were given a gloss coat and then a dark brown pastel wash to highlight the rivet details. I may do some light post-shading here and then I'll prime the outsides of the lower flaps for exterior painting.

Thanks Matt! Not looking forward to painting the wiring but I don't want to leave all of it Interior Green either. I'm not going to depict any battle damage on this aircraft. Weathering, yes but no bullet holes, stains from flying through an explosion or damaged rudder. Thanks Troy! Glad ya like it! The windscreen and canopy has been polished since they were both scuffed slightly. The clear parts were then given my customary bath in Future. I got the plastic rod today so I was able to complete the flaps. I'm going shoot them with a metal primer so the paint sticks to them better. I decided to give the flaps a preshade before painting. The brass background may give the interior green a slightly different shade but I'm ok with that... a little color variation is a good thing. Here are the interior of the flaps after a coat of Interior Green. I have to remember to primer the reverse side of the lower flaps before I paint them. The main landing gear legs have been enhanced with a brake line made from lead wire and attached using wee sections of brass tubing. You can see that I added a small copper pin to help hold the gear in place when it comes to glue time.

Thanks Craig! I used CA glue to secure the wiring in place. Debonder on a small stipple brush afterwards helps to clean any excess CA glue. Thanks Bill! I think the added PE, most notably the half engine and the brass flaps, introduced most of the variables that have been stressing me out. The flaps have sorted themselves out but the engine remains and I still have some questions/issues about how the nose is going to be secured onto the fuselage. Without those add-ons, I imagine the build would not be quite so complicated. Interesting! There is also this photo of the same aircraft... A little more wiring work has been added but I think I'm just about done. I may add a bit to the portion around the landing gear legs but maybe not. Due to the looseness of the ball/joint fixture of the landing gear legs, dry-fitting is very difficult but I managed to get one of the legs in place. I may try Chuck540z3's brilliant idea of adding a metal pin to help place the landing gear legs. I've temporarily glued the landing gear cover onto the leg because I was curious about getting the right stance and I'll be using the bottom edge of the landing gear cover in relation to the rest of the aircraft as a reference point. It doesn't really help without the fuselage attached so I'll have to figure that out later.

Not at all, Troy... I sometimes even change my mind when it comes to markings. The colors are pretty much the same for all these WW2 Tempest Mk V's so the wear and tear apparent in this photo appealed to me for some reason. Thanks guys! My initial attempt at wiring the wheel wells. Not very accurate but adds a little bit of visual interest.

Thank you Vincent! Always a pleasure to see your comments! I know right? Unpainted PE stuff always looks so cool! I am planning on doing the Terror of Rheine, David Fairbanks DFC, Serial No. EJ762, "JJ+F" as depicted in this photograph... I just wanted to report that I received an immediate reply from Special Hobby. They said that this is the first that they've heard of an issue with the clear light covers and that they'll be sending me a replacement clear sprue! What great customer service!

Thank you, Matt and John! Trying to correct this wobbly build one variable at a time. Trying to tie down another variable... adding one more contact point to secure the upper wing flap assemblies into place. When the time comes, I can place these assemblies and use my free hands to seep CA glue into the edges to secure them into place. Same idea on the other side but this one wanted an angled shelf. You can also see another sliver of white shim that I used to repair an overzealous saw removal along the wing trailing edge. The flaps have all been folded. I'm still waiting for the appropriate sized plastic rod to complete the lower flaps. Once I add those rods, I can prime and maybe even paint the flap assemblies. Most of today was spent on this little light cover. The clear piece does not fit well at all and in the shaping and fitting process, I ended up putting a crack down the middle of it. I immediately sent an email to Special Hobby but my brain started thinking about crafting a replacement in case I can't get another clear part. I scanned the wing bottom and traced the outline of the light cover. I then used my Silhouette Portrait cutter to cut a piece of thin sheet styrene. I couldn't get the blade to cut all the way through the plastic but it was scored deep enough that I was able to snap out the shape. A hole punch was used to create the circular opening and also a clear cover from a piece of acetate. I think this will be acceptable. Inching my way toward wiring the wheel wells. I took a page out of Chuck540z3's Tempest build and created a base for the box that is to be installed in this position. The base has a gap so that I can pass wiring through it. The box itself was sanded down so that only the top remained and will be used as a cover after the wiring is placed.

Ooooh... very nice, Quang! I really like your preshading approach using different colors.