Revel P-51D Lou IV: Blue and Green

[Gazzas]

Chris,

     I love how that paint job is coming along!  The exhaust shrouds seem a PITA.  Hopefully you can use the ones you want.

 

Gaz

[CANicoll]

Peter and Gaz,

 

Yeah, the exhausts are a bit of a chore.  Looks like Model Monkey will make separate shrouds so we'll see.  Steve says his set fits tight, but they fit.  So we will see.

What do you guys think of the blue?

 

Peter - going to revisit the pictures and see what I come up with. I just can't imagine color those gun ports are.  Definitely NOT yellow, or green.  Can't imagine they are blue as they would blend into the wing, which is blue in that section.  The B&W under picture they look like they are the same shade as the NMF wing, but up top it looks different.  So I'm a bit baffled.

 

Going to put down a gloss coat tonight to get ready for decals probably on Tuesday.

CN

[Model_Monkey]

Based on Chris' experience and recommendations, the 3D-printed exhausts with shrouds now come as separate pieces for easier painting.

 

The test pieces fit quite well with my Revell kit, as shown in the photo on the product page.  It should be noted that when I test fit the pieces, the fuselage was not assembled.  I do regret that you are having difficulty with them.

Edited June 25, 2018 by Model_Monkey

[Guest Peterpools]

Chris

I guessing they MG shrouds may actually be painted the same aluminum color of the wing. I'll do some poking around and see what I can find

Peter

[CANicoll]

Chris

I guessing they MG shrouds may actually be painted the same aluminum color of the wing. I'll do some poking around and see what I can find

Peter

 

Thanks, that is what I did as well - aluminum.  Seems bright but then again, for the photo the planes were obviously cleaned up - no exhaust staining 

[66misos]

Hi CANicoll,

 

You pay a lot of attention to details, so may be you would wish to check upper surfaces of the horizontal stabilizers - those "black" stripes look lighter then surrounding area, they look rather same blue as on the top of the wings:

 

 

Regards,

   66misos

Edited June 25, 2018 by 66misos

[cbk57]

Love the work on this. Truely an interesting subject. I don't know that Lou IV is an important aircraft in and of its self, however, it is an iconic modeling subject. I remember this being a decal option in mustang kits going back to my childhood. To try to capture the correct look of this plane with the years of discussion behind it is to me something of a modeling milestone. I think this work is moving the ball closer to what the reality was.

 

I believe there is significance in what serious scale modelers do.

[MikeMaben]

I don't think the gun ports are silver

 

BIG picture ...

 

 

Not sure what they are 

Big help , I know.

[KUROK]

You could take a picture of your model out in the sun and convert it to black and white photo.

Then you could see if the contrast is same as orginal.

[barsoom1717]

I may have a clue.  Looking at the picture from mmaben, look at the color of the gun ports in comparison to that little triangle just to the upper right of the "IV" of "Louie IV".  To me they look the same.  So looking at the color pic, it looks kind of like steel or light blue, but definitely not silver.

[CANicoll]

Gents,

 

LOVE the discussion and your suggestions, keep 'em coming! 

 

Its killing me looking at those horizontal stabilizer pics and seeing that they DO appear lighter than the rest of the paint.  Ugh.  I took it for granted that they were black, but now that I look closely I agree that they are definitely a lighter shade than the surrounding green and I think I agree that they are probably blue.    I'm trying to also understand the rationale for blue stripes and not black.  That part I don't get, esp on the stabilizers.

 

And blowing up the pics from Dana's scans, I wonder what color the gun port really are.

 

One caveat/warning - which also came from Dana : when looking at a Black and White picture, matching colors is nearly impossible without further reference.  The triangle looks to be the same color as the lines around Lou IV (which are clearly yellow on the color pictures) on the B&W picture, but is clearly a different color on the color pictures - more like a green/olive/drab perhaps?

 

The colors in these pics do get to me.  I have one pic where the blue on the fuselage, tail and wing tips all looks the same dark blue shade. THEN I have other pics (such as the B&W above) where the fuselage blue looks much lighter than the blue on the wings or the wing tips.  Drives me a little bonkers.

 

Going to have a discussion with Dana about that and the color of the gun ports.

 

Thank gents, I really DO appreciate the comments and your thinking on this.  Nice having a few different brains thinking about this!

Chris

Edited June 27, 2018 by CANicoll

[LSP_K2]

This is one of my two favorite schemes for the Mustang. Yours is looking quite excellent.

[BlackCanopy]

Depending on what filters are used when taking monochromatic photographs (of the chemical sort), the wavelengths reflected from different color surfaces can be enhanced or suppressed, resulting in darker or lighter representations of those colors in the final picture. So there is really no way of telling colors from old B&W pictures, other than guessing that the sky was propably blue. Whether the grass was green too, you will not be able to tell, it could've been yellow or brownish ;-)

 

If you want to show nice white clouds before a dark sky, put on an orange filter, as a result of which all red, orange and yellow colors in your picture are going to be represented in very bright hues. If you filter out the shorter wavelenghts instead, blue will become a very light gray, while red is going to be almost black.

 

Add to that the different surface quality of different colors (sometimes caused by more or less layers of paint), which results in different reflection grades, which very much *might* have caused a black stripe on a horizontal stabilizer, viewed from a steep angle as in the above picture, to appear lighter than the adjacient color of blue(?). It's complicated.

 

For the above reasons, it would be very cumbersome to make a test, as suggested by Kurok, with a digital camera in B&W mode. Unless you are really a specialist in those things (or your camera has this kind of sophisticated software), you will propably not know according to what principles the algorithms of your camera (or software) are turning colors into fifty (hopefully more) shades of gray. 

 

Great representation of a damn fine bird here, whatever its true colors really were!

 

Cheers,

joerg

Edited June 27, 2018 by BlackCanopy

[66misos]

Hi,

To get a "visual representation" of the Joerg's article you would wish to check this article http://massimotessitori.altervista.org/sovietwarplanes/pages/lagg3/57/white57.html

I know, it is off-topic regarding P-51D, but there is a lot of b&w photos of the one LaGG-3 aircraft, once photographed by Soviets and latter photographed by Germans and/or Finns, all used different photographic materials and filters - and differences in the interpretation of red, green, blue etc. colors are almost unbelievable.

Regards,

   66misos

[quang]

Looking good Chris. My guesstimate is the gun ports are yellow as they appear to have the same hue as the cowling.

 

 

It does make sense. The panels surrounding the gun ports were removable. I've seen them in red. So why not yellow?