Little Bunny - Italian Front Thunderbolt

[John1]

Plugging away on the cockpit.   Port sidewall is complete (just need to add the throttle quadrant) and glued in place.

 

 

IP front is done, just need to add the instrument housings and wiring on the backside since that area will be partially visible once the cockpit is sealed up.

 

Back armor plate.   MDC gives you a PE stencil so you can add the factory markings to the armor plate.   I pretty much botched it but doubt much will be visible once it's fully assembled.   If it is, my story is that the Republic factory rushed the stenciling job (it was done on a Friday afternoon).   Not going to bother smoothing in the Flory wash on the bottom as it will probably not be visible once it's assembled. 

 

[adameliclem]

Great stuff as usual, John.

 

Cheers

Adam

[John1]

I'm calling the port sidewall and floorboards done.  Got the throttle quadrant mounted, added a few scratchbuilt bits and tiny decals.   Next up is the seat and harness.  Got the Eduard "Steel" PE harness set.  Never used this before, wish me luck.  

 

 

 

[John1]

Seat is complete.   MDC even includes the bungee cords that allowed the pilot to raise / lower the seat.    I thought about using the MDC PE belts but opted to go with Eduard's "Steel" belts.   Not the greatest detailing, if I had to do it over again, I'd opt for fabric / PE buckles.   I hit the pre-painted PE belts with some Flory wash, as the ones of seen in RL seem to be pretty grungy and not a uniform shade of light tan.   After that, I assembled the seat to the armor plating.  I also shortened the landing gear retraction lever, it seemed to be a bit too long.     Cockpit's getting there!

 

 

Attached to the pilot's back armor plate.  Note the large size of the armor plate, much more protection than any other US fighter and a huge amount more than anything flown by the Axis. 

 

Rear bulkhead and armor plate test fitted to the cockpit assembly.  Hope everything fits ok.

 

That's it for now, thanks for looking! 

[Jeff T]

Looking good John!

 

Cheer's,

Jeff.

[Citadelgrad]

Very nice results.  We’e got a brace of Thunderbolts rollingdown the line.  Looks amazing. 

Edited June 15, 2021 by Citadelgrad

[John1]

Thanks guys!   Cockpit "tub" is completed. Still have a good amount to do though. I'll tone down a few scratches that seem too bright and hit the lower sections with a coating of pastels to simulate the Italian dust that got everywhere on these hard working aircraft. Tough to see with my crappy pictures but all the instruments have housings and wiring behind the panel.

 

 

 

 

 

I will say that the Dark Dull Green paint really makes the cockpit interior somewhat "gloomy" and it's difficult to show off the details with my limited photography skills.   Anyway, for those who are looking, thanks for checking in!

[adameliclem]

Great work, John. Considering the conditions this P-47 flew in, a little bit of gloomy overcast seems appropriate.

 

cheers

Adam

[Jeff T]

Looks great all put together John!..top work!

 

I should have weathered mine up a bit more like you have, its a little too pristine for one of these planes now looking at yours.

 

Cheer's,

Jeff.

 

 

[Woody V]

14 hours ago, John1 said:

I will say that the Dark Dull Green paint really makes the cockpit interior somewhat "gloomy" and it's difficult to show off the details with my limited photography skills. 

If I may make a suggestion, use a dark background instead of the white. This will force your camera's auto-exposure to "see" darker areas. Also if you painted the outside of the tub black that would help too, but not sure if you want to go that far. 

[MikeMaben]

Nicely work John 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 31, 2021 by MikeMaben

[John1]

I'm back!   Sorry for the month and a half delay in updates, I made the mistake of going down the F-4C / Operation Bolo wormhole.  Finally decided to take a break from sanding bogus panels off the Tamiya F-4C fuselage and do a bit of work on Little Bunny.   Unlike the Mosquito I just built, the Hase kit is amazingly simple with very few parts.   That being said, the detail is pretty nice, especially given the age of the kit.   All I've added to the fuselage was to thin out the engine cooling doors under the nose and the opening in the tailplane for the elevator linkage.   After that, it was simply a matter of popping in the cockpit and gluing the fuselage together.  Not sure if there are some fit issues or I botched the installation of the resin cockpit but I did have some gaps that needed to be sanded and puttied.    After that, I bit of re-scribing and replaced a few rivets.   One mod I did make was to saw off and lower the engine mounting stub a few mm's.  From other builds, it appears that if you don't do this, your cowling will be sitting a bit too high.   

 

 

 

Next up - the engine.  I used the Quickboost R2800.   It's a nice replica and cheap as well.   I thought about getting the Vector engine but it's pricey and honestly, for this application, all you are going to see is the front.   If I was planning on leaving some cowling panels off, I would have spent much more time here but given that's not the case, all I added were the pushrods and ignition leads.  Neither of these items is my best work but again, from the viewing angle, they don't have to be perfect. 

 

One last modification - the version of the R2800 used in these aircraft have some very unique magneto housings.    Hasegawa missed this entirely, as did Quickboost.   See below (picture graciously provided by LSP's own "Juggernut".  

 

To get something close to these magnetos, I took the ones that came in the QB kit, reversed them and added some styrene details. Being positioned as they are, a lot of the crude details I added really won't be very visible through the cowl opening.    Here's my take on this engine:

 

 

For weathering I did a black wash on the cylinders and then used Flory's "Grime" wash on the crankcase and between the cylinders.   I plan on going back and cleaning off a bit of the Flory wash in the pic directly above.   

 

Here's the engine press-fitted in place, looks like I need to touch up the black around a few of those bolt-heads.  Remember - you'll never see the tops of those cylinders once the cowling is glued on. 

 

Last item will be a Pratt & Whitney logo on the front of the crankcase.   Unlike the picture of the real thing above,  engines in combat service got filthy very quickly.   Between the dust, oil leaks, maintenance being done outdoors in all weather, it didn't take long for the engines to develop a nice crusty patina.   

 

Along similar lines, the cowling interior was NMF but this wouldn't stay clean for very long either.   I mucked up the inside with more Flory wash, I plan on going back to add some oil spillage later.  It looks horrible below but when viewed with engine in place, from the front, I think it will look pretty decent.  I checked, the knockout pin impressions on the interior won't be visible once the engine is in place! 

 

So that's it for now.   Gotta get back to sanding my F-4 fuselage, thanks for looking and have a good weekend! 

 

[Juggernut]

Nice job on the engine and cowl.  I’ll need to remember that the cowl interior was anodized aluminum and forego the paint for my next P-47 project.  
 

Just one small point if I may.  The dual magneto between the turtle back magnetos shouldn’t be there.  The GE ignition system contained the magnetos and distributors in each self-contained unit.  The engine would have a blanking plate installed over the drive pad where that dual magneto currently sits. The prop governor should be the only thing remotely in that area.  Don’t know if it’s molded to the gear case or you had to glue it in place.  If it’s glued, it would be a lot easier to remove if you chose to do so.  Not many will know that it shouldn’t be there so it’s not a huge issue.

[Guest Vincent]

Hi

 

You really did a great job on the cockpit. Congrats !

 

Vincent

[dodgem37]

You got all that right!  Great show.

 

Sincerely,

Mark