Dragon P51D Mustang

[Gene]

And a detail of the starboard side of the cockpit:

[Gene]

Now all the work is on the outside of the plane. First things to finish up were the landing gear. An early test fit of the main gear legs into the wing didn’t encourage me to continue with that set up; I opted to plant in the wing my own gear stub receptacle and a brace tube where the main swing axle occurs (top right of following pic). I’ve used telescoping stainless steel tubes throughout. They come in very thin wall and allow for nice scale sizing and have a very close tolerance to prevent any wobbliness.

 

After pondering what to do with the kit’s solid scissor links, my path of least resistance was to drill holes in the links and then carefully remove the connecting remains until I had an open web link. Still not an accurate representation, but enough to give the impression of lightness to the pieces. On the plus side, they did fit into their pivot holes nicely and would assemble convincingly in the end.

 

The real challenge was to get the hydraulic line to wonder around and through the scissor links. I replaced the kit’s hydraulic line, which did not represent the changing diameters as the rigid line hooks to the flexible and back to the rigid. With the links swung open the upper strut was slid down into place, the hydraulic line fed over to the yoke and down to the wheel hub, and finally the links were closed.

 

The wheel/tire was replaced with a set from True Details. They come flattened and bulged, but the bulge is far too exaggerated for my taste, so I’ve carefully scraped the bulge back to something I could believe, although it may not be correct, but I’ll never know (– self, pay no attention).

 

The maintenance plate and red ‘warning’ plate are from the Eduard’s placard set.

[Javlin1]

Pictures are a bit grainy(and I'm one to talk) Gene but I like it,looks convincing to me,esp. the actual metal for the shock in the oleos.Kevin

[Gene]

Thanks Kevin, sorry about the grainy-ness. Each time it is reduced it seems something gets lost. Below is one of the pics laid on its side to keep as much of the detail (warts and all!)-

[Gene]

Time to tidy up some of the loose ends on the wing. It is not unusual for me to overlook some small part here or there during the modeling process. So I looked high and low for something that goes into the port wingroot leading edge that has such a generous opening molded into the top and bottom wing halves (first pic). There is no mention or even an indication of this opening in the instructions and the boxtop artwork, which features the same port wing showing nothing whatsoever in this area.

 

However, looking over my refs, whenever there is a clear view of this area of the wing, there appears a small hole in this spot about the diameter of the wing machine gun muzzle (not the ’laminar flow’ bulge around the muzzle). In one front view drawing, a rectangular area surrounding the hole was indicated and it matches the kit’s hole. Somewhere I had seen mention of a gun camera and I feel that is what this is.

 

It could not be left alone. My solution was to deform a small piece of aluminum tube to the size of the rectangle, cyano that in, and then cyano another round tube in the cavity and backfill the gap with CA, file flush and work up to a polished leading edge. At this point I don’t know if there is just a camera lens in the hole or there is a clear aerodynamic cover over the hole – TBD.

[Gene]

The underwing formation lights were provided in the kit’s clear parts as a cluster of lenses to be applied from within the wing; this would leave a sizeable ring depression around each lens. The whole assembly should be flush with the wing surface. With some flat heavy aluminum foil, some depression was burnished into the foil and then punched into small discs with a Waldron punch. That was cyanoed into the opening, filled with cyano and filed and sanded flush. Using the Waldron punch again, some trim rings were punched and glued in place.

 

Tamiya Clear Red and Green were used to float over the lens. A fortunate accident helped me get the Yellow; last time I used the Tamiya Clear Green, it was very dense with pigment, so this time I thought, don’t shake the bottle and the tint will be a little weaker (the pigment tends to settle out over time). Oh yes! It was so weak it was Yellow!! Hooray! Now I was set with all 3 colors – float the Yellow, shake the bottle, float the Green.