P-38G Lightning: Operation Vengeance - FINISHED

[Dukie99]

Some of you may have noticed that I very much like participating in LSP GBs, I find it a great way to spring subjects to the top of the build queue and it fits my build style as I do not have the patience or the talent to spend more than 6 months on any given build. This is the build I wanted to do for the air superiority GB but I chickened out because I was not sure I would be able to escape the shelf of doom on this one, so I built a Swiss Hornet instead and quietly started at the same time this projet of converting Trumpeter P-38L into a P-38G using the Grey Matter Figures conversion. I share it now here because I reached a point in the build where I am fairly certain that I will avoid the SOD. It will not be perfect and definitely not to the standard of great P-38 builds on LSP (Chuck's Bong P-38 comes to mind), but I think it should be decent (at least to my eyes). I read some times ago about Operation Vengeance and I was blown away by the feat of airmanship that it is to precisely intercept at near maximum range two Japanese Bettys, one which was carrying Admiral Yamamoto, escorted by four zeros. When Tamiya recently came out with its new 1/48 P-38F/G and I realised that one of the subjects you could build from the box was a P-38G of Operation Vengeance, I decided to purchase that kit and use it as a reference for the 1/32 conversion of the Trumpeter for the parts where the Grey Matter conversion does not provide any parts (the cockpit and the wheel bays.

 

For aftermarket, I am using Grey Matter Figures conversion, corrected propellers and resin wheels. I am also using some of the Eduard big ed set, master barrels and I will use the Tamya decals to cut masks for the marking. I am also using SOW landing gear which are really fantastic

Box shot and AM

The conversion resin set, very well casted for the most part

with the instructions which are not for the true beginner...

 

Cheers,

 

David

Edited May 26, 2021 by Dukie99

[Troy Molitor]

Looking forward to this one David.   

[Dukie99]

So I will now play catch up to the build up to where I stand now. I apologize for not documenting all steps but I tend to be carried away by the build and to forget about taking picture, so it is what it is.

 

The biggest challenge of the build are the booms, so I started with that. In order to assemble the booms you need to assemble the wheel wells, so that was the first step.

Here are one of the wheel wells before painting with some Eduard etch details installed. I did not use all the etch but attempted to reproduce the look of the Tamiya wheel well with some of the Eduard Etch. Needless to say that the Tamiya kit OOB in 1/48 is better looking than my poor attempt at mimicking it but I rarely crawl under my build once they are in the display cabinet, so this will have to do. I still need to install some kind of cooling system which is installed on the wheel leg (as per Tamiya 1/48 kit and I am scratch building that part, but it can be installed later on and the idea was to build the wheel well so that it is ready to be installed in the boom and leave further detailing for later. 

After MRP aluminum primer and a wash

Done twice it took a while. the SOW legs look absolutely great, fitted perfectly inside the wheel well and have a rock solid feel to it, so I would highly recommend it for any P-38 build. The main issue then is not to break the four actuators for the rest of the build, so far so good.

 

Cheers,

 

David

 

 

Edited March 17, 2021 by Dukie99

[Troy Molitor]

I also have a pair of the S.O.W gears and they are stunning.  I certainly agree.  We don't see enough P-38's being built (shame) but I'm enjoying this new fresh start.   Thanks for posting your build with us!.

 

Troy 

[Dukie99]

After building the wheel wells comes THE CUT!!! If you look at the GMF instruction, you need to hack the booms pretty extensively: first all the lower engine cowl is a goner, the picture below shows you the hacking lines on both sides

 

Doing so leaves the forward portion of the boom in the consistency of an overcooked noodle with the upper cowl holding to the rest of the boom by less than 5mm of styrene. With the help of an excellent single malt, I steeled my nerve and made the cut. I first made the cut on the inside edge of the tape, leaving me a 2mm margin of error and I managed not to break anything. After that I decided to glue the wheel wells inside the boom and to glue the half booms together. The idea was to have the boom assembled to start the process of fitting as best as I could the massive pieces of resin which make the lower engine cowl (see picture above).  Those resin pieces are solid resin and very heavy, not nearly heavy enough to avoid a tail sitter but they help. The other thing that these resin pieces do is to say goodbye to Trumpy's engine (and any fixing point for the propellers).

After lengthy careful fitting session, I managed to fit and glue with epoxy the lower engine cowls on both booms to finally obtain this:

 

Mind you this is not the picture after glueing the two pieces together. This is after three sessions of puttying and sanding and priming with MRP silver. As you can see there is more work needed to completely smooth the transition between styrene et resin and then the fun job of rescribing can start.

Frontal view of the lower engine cowling. The resin stops half-way and the upper cowling is empty. I epoxied under the upper cowling a dollar worth of quarters to add weight and cut a piece of styrene to close the front after embedding in epoxy a styrene tube which will serve as a shaft for the propeller. So far so good.

 

Cheers,

 

David

Edited March 17, 2021 by Dukie99

[Dukie99]

After doing THE CUT! and smoothing the front comes the SECOND CUT! As you can see from the instructions, GMF would have you cut the boom 5mm behind the wheel well and then further down the boom where the tape is on the below picture

, i.e. the area of the air intake

 

 in order to fit that in between:

At this juncture, I asked myself what were the chances that I would be able to keep the three portions of the boom (engine and wheel bay, air intake portion and tail section) solidly glued and perfectly aligned. When the answer came as "slim to none", I knew I had to devise another solution. I am sure that what GMF is suggesting is doable but the cut on the side of the wheel well is so close to the wheel well itself that I could not see how to attach the air intake portion securely and then there was the problem of keeping everything perfectly aligned. Instead of potentially fatally weakening the structure of the boom by making the suggested cut, I decided to fill the carving made by Trumpy in the boom to fit the air intake, smooth the boom and then cut out of the resin the air scoop themselves and glue them on with epoxy. The front part of the air scoop is already a separate resin part which is flush with the fuselage and so the only piece to cut from the resin fuselage is the rear part. I thought it was a much less risky option.

So I did this first: a little planking

Then a little sanding:

Then a little bit of MRP liquid plastic

then more sanding to get there

After another application of Mr. Surfacer 500 and another wet sanding session and a coat of silver primer it looked like this

Not perfect but getting in the right direction. Rescribing necessary but that will be done after fitting the resin air scoops.

 

After spending nearly a month working on the booms, I needed to check that all this was not in vain and that the booms would fit and align with the wings and to assess how much weight I needed to add in the nose to make her sit solidly on her three legs. And so I taped everything up and I got that:

Needless to say I was a happy camper. You can see on the picture below the coins that go into the nose to keep her from sitting on her tail

The cockpit is a work in progress. The seatbelts are HGW. I will make a separate post on the cockpit when it is done.

 

This is where I stand tonight so from now on the progress will be much slower. I need to finish the cockpit, glue the airscoops on the booms and then rescribe all the lost details on the booms and then fit some kind of reinforcement in the wings to prevent them from sagging. still some challenges ahead but I think the hardest part is behind.

 

Cheers,

 

David

Edited March 17, 2021 by Dukie99

[Troy Molitor]

Well done.  The a/c "sit" certainly looks the part.  

[Hawkwrench]

Looking nice!

Never new MRP made liquid plastic. Might be a good thing for seams and such apparently. 

 

Tim

[Out2gtcha]

Wow, looks tremendous! 

[Jeff T]

Jeezzz, bit of work involved in this David!

 

Looking forward to more progress.

 

Cheer's,

Jeff.

[nmayhew]

a ballsy conversion to be sure!

 

what is MRP Liquid Plastic please??

 

Also, how is the adhesion of their silver primer?

[Out2gtcha]

7 minutes ago, nmayhew said:

what is MRP Liquid Plastic please??

 

 

Agreed, not even heard of this before, and cant even find any pics of it anywhere. 

[Dukie99]

It MRP Mr. Filler, liquid putty rather than liquid plastic. I guess I am calling it liquid plastic because it very much sand like styrene (and smells like it). I like this stuff. It is a bit thicker than Mr. Surfacer 500 and it dries quickly (and it shrinks quite a bit)

 

Cheers,

 

David

[Out2gtcha]

Thanks!  Might have to try that. I like MS500, but sometimes even that is too thin.

[Dukie99]

1 hour ago, nmayhew said:

a ballsy conversion to be sure!

 

what is MRP Liquid Plastic please??

 

Also, how is the adhesion of their silver primer?

The adhesion of the silver primer is excellent on well washed resin (I give the resin a bath of diluted bleach), but it is very thin, so you see all imperfection on the plastic or resin. Not sure I will be able (or have the patience) to get the surface perfect so I may resort to Alclad primer and microfiller.