Forgotten War Mustang

[USMC Herc]

4 hours ago, John1 said:

Thanks Jason!   Regarding the weathering of those placards - if you look at those two F-51 cockpit pics I posted above, it appears that most of the placards in that heavily beaten up cockpit are intact.   I assumed they are made of some material that is more durable than the regular cockpit paint.    

 

That being said, they do stand out more than I want.   What I will be doing after I dullcoat the cockpit (which should help blend them in a bit) will be to use pastels to replicate the dust that typically got everywhere.   I think that should do the trick!   Fingers crossed.  

John 

The pastel weathering should help a ton. When i worked on C-130s we replaced placards only when they became unreadable and if they where important. Some placards have basic info that you can remember without placards.

It is always your choice my friend, you are seeing the cockpit first hand and we only get to look at pictures.

 

Jason

Edited August 19, 2019 by USMC Herc

[John1]

2 hours ago, USMC Herc said:

John 

The pastel weathering should help a ton. When i worked on C-130s we replaced placards only when they became unreadable and if they where important. Some placards have basic info that you can remember without placards.

It is always your choice my friend, you are seeing the cockpit first hand and we only get to look at pictures.

 

Jason

Good points you raised.   To be honest, you caught issues I hadn’t noticed before.  I’ll try to go a bit heavier on weathering those placards.  Thanks for the tip!  

[John1]

Made a bit more progress.   Added most of the decals to the port sidewall, also added the pilot's O2 hose and emergency canopy jettison handle to the starboard side.   They add a bit of color to break up the overall black.   Next up will be the dullcoat and final weathering.   Still have some small parts to add to the sidewalls but I'm holding off until the cockpit is complete.   Much too easy to break them off during the final assembly.

 

 

 

Thanks for looking!

[Antonio Argudo]

great job on that cockpit man,  could be that the rear of the cockpit was also painted in black, like these?

cheers

[John1]

9 hours ago, Antonio Argudo said:

great job on that cockpit man,  could be that the rear of the cockpit was also painted in black, like these?

cheers

Good point Antonio.    I asked in a previous post if this area was black or not, never got a conclusive answer.   I figured that to paint it black would have required removal of the fuel cell and radios which would be a fair amount of work, so I planned on having everything aft of the pilot’s armor paste remain in IG.   I might re-evaluate.....

[John1]

A bit more progress to share..  I opted for the Barracuda resin seat with cast-on seat-belts.  Nothing that wrong with the kit parts except that the Tamiya PE harness is extremely thick.  I typically prefer resin seats with the harness cast in place.   I think the belts look more flexible and natural vrs PE which always seems to be a bit stiff looking. 

 

The Barracuda resin one is exquisitely detailed and Barracuda thoughtfully provides decals to replicate the "US Army Air Force" stencil on the seatback cushion (may actually be a survival pack, I'm not sure).  As an example of their attention to detail, they also give you a "US Army Air Corps" decal as well, in case you are modeling an earlier vintage Mustang.  They also provide the stitching for seatbelts.  All this for around $10.  You really can't go wrong with any of Barracuda's stuff. 

 

Although in concept the seat should be black since the rest of the cockpit was repainted this color, going with my reference pics above, they show an interior green seat.  No idea if the seat wasn't painted during the refurb process or at some point in that F-51's career the original was damaged and replaced with a WW2 vintage seat.  Either way, I want to add a bit of color to my cockpit.  The seat was painted Interior Green, the cushion a mix of testors gloss yellow with a bit of brown added.  The leather headrest was Testor's Chocolate Brown, with a dry brushing of progressively lighter tan colors to replicate a decade's worth of wear and tear. 

 

I then mounted the seat assembly to the cockpit floor.  To this part, I added Barracuda fuel gauges (cockpit space was at a premium in the Mustang, so NAA simply installed the gauges in cutouts in the floor boards.   I then gave these decals a dollop of Tamiya gloss to replicate their glass covers.  I also added tiny placards for the hot air control knobs that are inboard of these fuel gauges.   After this, I continued weathering.   Unlike most aircraft these F-51D's were filthy.   Lots of dirt and mud on those Korean airfields and some of it would end up getting tracked into the cockpit by the hardworking pilots and maintenance techs.  Weathering is still a work in progress.   

 

Anyway, enough text, here are a few pics. 

 

 

 

   

 

In looking at these pics, I think I'll hit the seat back with a black-ish wash to accentuate some of the wrinkles in the cushion.  Keep in mind as well, the entire seat assembly will also get dull-coated, so don't worry about the shiny cushion or harness. 

 

Thanks for looking!

 

[R Palimaka]

Some great progress there! That floor looks perfectly filthy and scuffed! The seat and harness is completely convincing too.

 

Richard

 

 

 

 

[MikeMaben]

Coming along nicely John 

[Gazzas]

Looking nice and worn!

[Shoggz]

John, I'm totally with you on the cast in place harnesses.. They just look better to me than PE. I used the Barracuda seat with belts in place for a Revell 1/32 Bf 109 G10 and I really liked them.

 

..and your cockpit is looking really good! Nice work on that floor.

[John1]

So I finally had a few minutes of down time...    First off, I added a few more bits to the cockpit sidewalls and then shot everything with dullcoate.   All in all, I'm pretty happy with the way things look.  Last steps will be to do some weathering, via dry brushing and pastels to further tone things down (especially some of those placards) and then add the final small bits like throttle handle and a few fragile levers.   After that, I'll call these parts done.

 

I think I'll also add a black wash to the tan signal flare holder.  

 

"50 shades of black"

 

Next - I also dull-coated the seat.   Still going to add some more dark-ish wash to the seat cushion.

 

 

 

Finally, the instrument panel.   I originally planned on using the Barracuda IP.   It's a mix of resin and PE.   After a great deal of thought, I passed on using pretty much all of it.  Although the PE avoids the "tunnel effect" of the Tamiya IP (using the kit parts as instructed results in the instrument decals being set extremely deep into the panel face), I wasn't happy with look of the Barracuda PE.   They provide each instrument bezel as a separate PE part and once assembled, it just looked rough.   

 

As I compromise, I decided to modify the Tamiya IP.   The kit part requires that you glue a clear plastic piece to the back of the plastic IP.  To the back of the clear part, you add a decal with the instrument faces.  The end result is that the instrument dials are set very far back.  What I did was to glue the Barracuda printed instrument faces directly to the back of the Tamiya instrument panel.  I'll then sandwich it with the modified clear backing part. 

 

This serves three purposes.  First off , the dial faces now are nowhere near as deep.  Secondly, by using the Barracuda dials, they are much more detailed than the crude Tamiya decal.  Lastly, the Barracuda dials are just black print on clear film.   You need to paint behind them to add color to the dials and numerals.   This is a good thing.  The Tamiya decals (and pretty much every other aftermarket product like Eduard, etc) are white on a black base. Only problem is that pretty much all US instruments used dials and numerals coated in a yellowish-green phosphorescent paint.  Refer to the picture of an original F-51 cockpit posted in the beginning of this log.   I mixed up some yellow, green and white to replicate this.  I then shot the panel with a gloss black with a few drops of white added and added the necessary Barracuda decals.   Can't say enough about these, they really rock!  After that,  I dullcoated the panel and lightly dry-brushed with a medium grey.   I then picked out some of the switches in various colors.  Finally, I attached the instrument film with some Future so it wouldn't obscure the dial faces.

 

Sorry for the long-winded description, I hope some of you find it helpful.    Here's the semi-complete IP.   I still need to add the last few dials, some switches and figure out if I'm going to use more Future for each of the IP faces, or just leave them as is.    Note that a few of the markings got skewed when I applied them over raised switches.   Not much you can do about it but once the whole cockpit is assembled, they shouldn't be that noticeable.  

Thanks for looking, Happy Friday guys. 

[Biggles87]

Great cockpit, I particularly like the floor, very realistic.

 

John

[monthebiff]

Really cool project, cockpit looks very nice.

 

Regards.Andy 

[John1]

Question for all the master modelers.   Any thoughts on how to weather decals.  Specifically see below:

 

 

The "USAF" marking and the aircraft number are both heavily worn & scratched.    I think I can replicate some of the scratches using a silver artist's pencil but I'm curious what your thoughts are on how to replicate the fading and peeling.    One of my pet peeves is looking at pictures of exquisitely weathered models with immaculate decals all over them.   

 

BTW, this is another great reference showing how nasty looking these hardworking birds got over there.  

Edited September 7, 2019 by John1

[John1]

More work done on the sidewalls.   First off, I added the throttle handle from the Barracuda set.  The throttle handle provided range information to the K-14 gunsight, via it's twist-able handgrip.   As a side note - The F-51D used the K-14 "Acemaker" gyro gunsight.  Introduced at the end of WW2, it was a pretty slick device.   It automatically computed the lead required for challenging off-angle deflection shots.  All the pilot had to do was to use a the roller grip on the throttle to reduce or enlarge the circular reticule on the gunsight to just fit the wingspan of the enemy aircraft.   The gunsight would then automatically compute the required lead and all the pilot had to do was keep the reticule centered over the bad guy and pull the trigger. No more having to guesstimate how much lead to pull.  Not too shabby consider this was in the pre-computer days!   For those interested, here's a flight sim video that shows the K-14 in action.

 

 

Anyway, getting back to the model, Barracuda provides a very nice K-14 throttle grip which I added to the sidewall quadrant.   Last bits to add to the throttle will be the cables that connect it to the K-14 sight and some linkages. 

 

Anyway, back to the sidewall weathering.  Using a well sharpend silver artists pencil (another new item I just started to use, it's great for replicating fine scratches),  I added some scrapes and scratches to the sidewalls.  Also scratched up some of the placards, as shown in the original pics (thanks for the tip USMCHerc!).   

 

Next step was to hit the sidewalls with tan pastels to replicate the Korean dust that got into every part of the cockpit.   The pastels do a good job of toning down the last of the shiny placards and cockpit fittings. 

 

 

Pretty much done with these bits.   Next step is to finish the IP and then start working on the stuff behind the pilot's seat. 

 

Thanks for looking! 

 

 

Edited September 8, 2019 by John1