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Forgotten War Mustang


John1

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Thanks guys.    While I'm waiting for my replacement airbrush to arrive, I put some time into the MG bay.   I've decided I'm going to have the left bay partially opened, just to add a bit of visual interest. At this point, I think I'll keep the ammo troughs closed and just leave the MG panels opened.  

 

Here is what the real thing looks like (pic courtesy of Prime Portal):

p-51d_14_of_25.jpg

All in all, Tamiya did a decent job in this area.  They included the gun solenoids (the silver boxes mounted on the side of each MG) and made an attempt to replicate the mounting tabs towards the rear of each weapon.  They even replicated the feed tray cover latches on the side of each weapon.  Pretty nice!  My only gripe is that they molded the MG's in half vertically so you are stuck with a seam down the middle.   

 

Here is where I am at so far:

IMG_0669

 

I added some details as shown below.   A few small bits of plastic and PE for the securing hardware, copper wire for the solenoid wiring, plastic rod for the conduit that comes off the solenoid housing and I also drilled out the lightening hole in the side of the compartment wall.   I still have to add the ammo feed trays and some latch hardware but that will be once the wing is fully assembled.  

IMG_0668

 

Given that this area would be filthy, I added powered graphite to the interior surfaces (and also rubbed it into the MG's to give them more of a realistic gunmetal finish).  I added multiple scratches using a silver artist's pencil and some paint and then did a heavy black wash to replicate the spilled weapons lube and grease.   It doesn't really show up well in my typical crappy pics but you'll have to trust me that it looks "ok".   I'm going to add some black pastels to the entire area a bit further down the road. 

 

That's it for now, thanks for looking! 

Edited by John1
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  • 2 weeks later...

So somehow I managed to ruin my faithful Badger 200 airbrush that I've had for over 20 years.   While waiting for a replacement I've been doing some small stuff (mainly adding some wiring to the main landing gear bays and weathering them).  Got my airbrush in yesterday and am back in business.   First off, here are the MLG bays.   I've still got to add more wiring but I wanted to get the weathering mostly completed first.  Weathering consisted of various washes of black and dark brown, chipping with both a silver artists pencil and bit of dark silver paint (regular silver seems too bright for this task) and then a heavy application of black pastels.  Still more to do in this area as well.   I figured the wheel wells on this aircraft would have been absolutely filthy.   Even on well maintained aircraft, these areas attracted a lot of oil stains, grime and dirt.

 

IMG_0671

 

IMG_0672

 

Next up is the upper cowling.  My subject has the later flat black glareshield.  Many pics of Korean F-51's show this area to have some decent chipping so I went with the hairspray technique.  I never used this method until recently and it's very good tool in my weathering box of tricks.  Not for every application but nothing replicates chipped paint better than this approach.  I applied it over Model Master flat aluminum.  I used a couple of shades of black to try to replicate faded paint.  Note that a few areas on the edge need to be touched up, I'll be doing that once I start painting the entire fuselage.

IMG_0673

 

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Anyway, that's it for now.  Hope to be able to start making a bit more progress now that I have a new airbrush.   Thanks for looking!

 

 

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Quick update - I've been adding some weathering and various conduits to the MLG bays.    These bays are incredibly "busy" and Tamiya didn't replicate any of the hydraulic / electrical lines.  This is one area that really could use an aftermarket insert.   Still a work in progress, I'm going to add a few more lines and some fastening brackets, at that point, I'm calling these done.

 

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Also added (what I assume to be) the flight markings that were present on the MLG door.  These weren't included with the decal sheet.  Thanks again to Antonio for finding the pictures of the real thing that illustrated this.   I forgot to bring the second door with me when I took the pics, you'll have to trust me that I painted on that marking as well.  

IMG_0675

Thanks for looking!

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Got a bit more done this AM.   I've completed the basic wing sub assembly.   No issues gluing it all together, typical Tamiya.   I'm diverging from the instructions a bit.  Since this kit is supposed to provide retractable landing gear, movable control surfaces, etc, I ignored those "features" and glued everything in place.   The only exception are the landing gear wheel covers.   These are designed to be able to pull them out and replace with closed gear doors.   I simply press-fitted these in place for a few pictures.   I'm then going to use the closed doors as masks and paint the entire wing prior to installation.  I find that for large kits like this, painting portions instead of the entire kit works for me.  Being a Tamiya kit, I don't expect any gaps once I install the wings.   If there are, it's not the end of the world. So here are some pics of my progress:

 

The entire wing assembly.   You can't really see it but I also drilled out the mounting points for the HVAR launchers.  

IMG_0686

 

Some detail shots.   As mentioned, the MLG bays have a mass of hydraulic lines.   I did my best to make this area look "busy" but I was unable (maybe just unwilling) to replicate each line. I think it still looks 100 times better than the bare kit bays.

IMG_0693

 

In this picture, you can barely make out some of the exquisite rivet detail that Tamiya provides.   Truly amazing work.    Since my F-51D has unputtied wings, all of this will be visible in the on the finished model. 

IMG_0692

 

Don't mind the gap on the leading edge below.  I'm not done with gluing it together. 

IMG_0694

 

That's it for now.   Next stop is the paint booth.  Thanks for looking! 

 

Edited by John1
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Starting to think about the weapons.  I've got HVAR's from the Tamiya F4U-1D kit, courtesy of a very kind LSP'er.   I'm going to couple those with two napalm tanks.    I posted over on the aircraft forum asking for info on whether these tanks were the standard 75 gal drop tanks or the larger 100 gal units and whether they had any particular modifications to them.  Any advice is appreciated.   I'm actually looking forward to painting these nasty things.  Here's a great illustration of how gross they got:

 

Napalm_01.jpg

 

On a related blog, it was said that they were not painted yellow but were actually painted (very crudely) with standard YZC.  What do you guys think?  Whatever it was, it flaked off pretty readily, as you can see above.   I'm thinking this will be a great use for my newly beloved hairspray technique replicate all the peeled off yellow paint!   No idea how to replicate that orange sludge around the fill port, any advice is always welcome!

Edited by John1
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From ‘photos I’ve seen it looks like they used both sizes of tank. Interesting point on the colour, I’d assumed that the ‘ yellow ‘ones had been painted in the squadron colour, but maybe not.

Have you decided on a metallic grey colour for the airframe yet?

 

John

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On 1/22/2020 at 1:37 AM, Biggles87 said:

From ‘photos I’ve seen it looks like they used both sizes of tank. Interesting point on the colour, I’d assumed that the ‘ yellow ‘ones had been painted in the squadron colour, but maybe not.

Have you decided on a metallic grey colour for the airframe yet?

 

John

Thanks for all the suggestions guys!   From the color pics I’ve seen, these tanks could be YZC, bright yellow, some dinghy shade of yellow, OD or natural metal.   I’m going with a light, sloppily applied coat of YZC over aluminum.   I’ll post some pics once I get a chance.   

 

With regard to the airframe, I’m going with AK Extreme Metals Matt Aluminum with some very light grey added.  It seems like I can mix the paint with Testors enamel with no negative side effects. I’m applying this over a flat dark grey primer coat.  Contrary to the review here on LSP, these paints seem to be very durable, with or without priming.   I can handle the surfaces, apply Tamiya tape, etc with no ill effects.  

 

I really like these paints!   I’ll post some pics in a bit.   

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I have also found that the Extreme Metal paints are durable, but I don’t have any AK Matt Aluminium (yet). I am going to try Tamiya Metallic Grey with a little Sky Grey on my paint mule, both on grey and black primers, but it won’t be for a while yet.

Looking forward to seeing your results.

 

John

Edited by Biggles87
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