Hasegawa 1/32 P-51D Mustang

[tomprobert]

Just catching up with this, Kev - she’s looking mighty fine.

The cockpit in particular looks really impressive, and unless you’d pointed out the exhaust issue I’d have been none the wiser!

 

Tom

[mc65]

muche better, Kevin, the cockpit area now looks absolutely ok!

 

regarding your questions about underwing attacks, I searched my (little) documentation, and found nothing definitive. but your reasoning holds up, in my opinion: considering that the specific role of the 8th P51s, especially the Ds, was long-range escort, the sub-wing tanks seem a must to me.

 

cheers, Paolo

[LSP_Kevin]

Just another small update today, as I've been waylaid by a string of things that have kept me away from this build. I can report, however, that I've dealt with most of the seams on the wings and fuselage to the extent that I was happy to finally join the two sub-assemblies together:

 

 

The seams will still need some more work, and a coat of primer will reveal exactly where and how much when the time comes. And while I was happy enough with how the wings and fuselage came together, the small gaps at the wing roots revealed during the test-fitting required just a little bit of extra attention, in my opinion, so I stretched some kit sprue, and forced it into the those gaps with copious amounts of liquid cement:

 

 

 

This is done not so much for gap-filling purposes, but to ensure that there's sufficient plastic joining the wings to the fuselage in this important area, and this something that styrene does better than pretty much every other choice available to modellers.

 

Before I glued the wings on, I decided to attend to the every-so-slightly oval gun ports. They weren't so bad that they needed to be replaced, but were noticeably out of round, so I grabbed this handy reamer tool by Ustar:

 

 

This made short work of the problem, and made the gun ports at least acceptable:

 

 

The only other thing I achieved was to join the spinner cone to its base plate:

 

 

I did scratch around to see if I could find a convenient set of replacement prop blades for the anaemic kit examples, but all I could find was a set from the Dragon kit in the parts box Mark sent me, so I decided to stick with the Hasegawa ones for now.

 

Kev

[dodgem37]

Good show.  Thanks for the tip.

 

Sincerely,

Mark

[Ayovan]

That reamer looks like a very handy tool. I might just need to find me one. Nothing like having the right tool for the task at hand.

Andy

[Greif8]

Top work Kev!  The reamer looks like a very handy tool.

 

Ernest

[LSP_Kevin]

Thanks, fellas. A quick question if I may. Looking ahead to the painting stage, and the main point of interest in the "Butch Baby" scheme I've chosen is the red and yellow spinner and forward nose, and while Hasegawa does provide decals for the nose chequers, I plan to mask and paint them. So I'm looking for advice and suggestions on the most appropriate shades of red and yellow to use here - most especially the yellow. At this stage I'm thinking RLM04 might be a good (enough) match, but if anybody knows better, please chime in! I'm assuming any red will do as long as it's not too bright.

 

Kev

[Ayovan]

4 hours ago, LSP_Kevin said:

Thanks, fellas. A quick question if I may. Looking ahead to the painting stage, and the main point of interest in the "Butch Baby" scheme I've chosen is the red and yellow spinner and forward nose, and while Hasegawa does provide decals for the nose chequers, I plan to mask and paint them. So I'm looking for advice and suggestions on the most appropriate shades of red and yellow to use here - most especially the yellow. At this stage I'm thinking RLM04 might be a good (enough) match, but if anybody knows better, please chime in! I'm assuming any red will do as long as it's not too bright.

 

Kev

I built the Revell P-51D-5NA as Frenesi with the same red and yellow nose. I used the kit decals for the checkerboard, and use Tamiya XF-7 for the red, and Mr. Color #113 (RLM04) for the yellow, to paint the spinner. XF-7 is a good match for the red, but I thought the #113 was still  too bright for the yellow. If you are painting the checkerboard, and not trying to match the decal, I would think the RLM04 would be close enough for government work... Just my very humble opinion.

[Alex]

Great to see you back at the bench, Kev!  I'm jealous - my house remodel/move is not nearly done yet, so I'm still a few months away from getting back to any modeling.  Those exhausts are amazing - do they come that color, or did you paint them like that?

[LSP_Kevin]

2 hours ago, Ayovan said:

If you are painting the checkerboard, and not trying to match the decal, I would think the RLM04 would be close enough for government work... Just my very humble opinion.

 

Thank you, sir! That's my thinking, too.

 

Kev

[LSP_Kevin]

4 minutes ago, Alex said:

Those exhausts are amazing - do they come that color, or did you paint them like that?

 

They come out of the packet looking exactly as you see them. I also used a set on my Trumpeter Birdcage Corsair project, but couldn't quite get them to seat correctly:

 

 

The Moskit brand is long gone now, unfortunately, though apparently ReXx makes a similar product.

 

Kev

[MikeMaben]

On 4/18/2022 at 12:25 PM, LSP_Kevin said:

The Moskit brand is long gone now, unfortunately, though apparently ReXx makes a similar product.

 

https://www.hbhobbies.com/search?type=product&q=REXx

[LSP_Kevin]

I was hoping to have another update for you guys by now, but I've been a bit busy getting the latest book finished and launched, and working on some post-move repairs on some of my completed builds. I have at least done some more seam work, and currently have some Milliput awaiting my attention. Hopefully I'll get a chance to attend to that tomorrow.

 

Kev

[Alex]

On 4/20/2022 at 3:29 AM, MikeMaben said:

 

https://www.hbhobbies.com/search?type=product&q=REXx

Wow - that’s a huge selection of exhausts.  I’m definitely going to be wasting some money there…

 

Thanks for posting 

[LSP_Kevin]

OK, time for yet another token update, just to try to keep the ball rolling. Here's the current state of the airframe:

 

 

It's a bit hard to see in the photo, but there's some Milliput in the wing root and tailplane joins, and it's really just waiting on a coat of primer now, so I can sort out all the flaws and get it ready for painting.

 

In the meantime, I've turned my attention to some of the smaller elements, starting with the wheels. Here's what I found in the goodies box (the primer is my addition):

 

 

No brand, but they're clearly True Details products (a quick Google search confirms it), complete with the overly bulged ground contact points that this brand was infamous for. There was no way I was leaving them like that, so after some vigorous sanding and a poor attempt at restoring the lost tread lines, I ended up with this:

 

 

Much better! And as you can see, they've retained their flat spots, and that's really all that's required to give them a realistic "weight-bearing" appearance. I also drilled out the rear hubs to accept the kit axles:

 

 

These, too, are now ready for priming and painting. Still deciding whether I can be bothered adding brake lines!

 

And finally, I assembled the drop tanks:

 

 

I may well add some better fuel cap details to these, as they're fairly prominent on the real thing, and fairly horrible on the kit. But I'm trying really hard to not drift into AMS territory here, and stick to my original plan of using pretty much only what I find in the box, and doing on the bare minimum of extra work.

 

OK, that's it for now. Once I can get past my current inertia to sit at the spray booth, I should be able to move through the painting stages fairly quickly - though I do plan to paint most of the markings, so this might slow me down a tad. We shall see!

 

Kev