I haven't built an aircraft since I was kid, and that's at least 10 years ago  So I thought I'd give it a try. I quickly found out that building aircrafts are quite different from building armor and cars, which I usually do. So many seams to fill, rescribing and so on...but I guess you aircraft modellers know what I'm talking about.

It's an OOB-build with just some aftermarket decals and home made seat belts. I hade to get new decals due to the fact that the original Hasegawa decals had started to get yellow.

Anyway, here's the build log from start to finish.

I chose a P-47 Thunderbolt that I had lying around. I really think that the P-47 is one of the cooler WWII fighters.

Painted and assembled the cockpit.
The color is US Interior green, with a dark wash in several places.
Seatbelts are Tamiya masking tape and buckles are made of thin wire. Upper seatbelts painted with Vallejo Buff and the lower ones with Vallejo Khaki. My references indicated different color on upper and lower belts.
The rest of the cockpit was picked out with flat black and brown, and dry brushed with a light grey color. Knobs and switches were picked out with white and red. The head rest and cover around the base of the control lever were painted to simulate leather. An HB pencil were used to simulate scuff marks and metal.

Here's the P&W R-2800 engine assembled and painted.
Painted the cylinders with Alclad Aluminum, the crankcase got a coat of Vallejo Neutral Grey.
Magnetos etc. got a coat of flat black.
Dry brushed the magnetos etc. with a light grey color and the rest with a rusty brown color, and finished it off with a brown/black oily wash.

I think it turned out ok.

Thought I'd try a little creative pre-shading instead of the usual one that everyone is using for airplanes. I allowed myself to dothis sinces this is a "trial and error-build" for me
I used NATO black and NATO brown, moving with the direction of airflow on the horizontal surfaces, and vertically on the fuselage sides.
I also sprayed aluminum on the cowling and along the wing roots ,and a couple of coats of hair spray to prepare for the chipping in the weathering process later. It's gonna be a battle weary machine.

Started the painting and weathering process. Painted the recognition stripes on the tail with Vallejo Air White and masked them off. I also painted the blue around the cowling and masked that off too, before spraying the olive drab. All colors used are Vallejo Air.
I've also started the fading of the OD color and started the chipping down to bare aluminum. Here she is ready for a coat of gloss and the decals, and then some more fading and weathering.
I'm planning on using some of my armor weathering techniques on this plane.

Decals and stencils in place after a gloss coat. Quite a bit of stencils on this old fighter.
Sealed the declas with another coat of gloss and has started the weathering
This is were the fun starts...battle weary it is! ;)

No pictures of the weathering process, but here's some pics of the finished model with comments were needed.

I made the antenna from stretched sprue and the spring fastener of really thin wire.

I feel the canopy masking came out ok. Here you can see some of the varaiation in the OD and the wear and tear on the plane.

Here's a close up of the nose art. It has been "beaten up" some with chipping etc. like the rest of the plane.

I painted ths sockets for the wing bottom landing lights silver, and then painted the lenses with clear red, blue and orange.
The landing lights on the wing tips got drilled out and I added a drop of clear red and clear blue to simulate the bulbs, the rear of the light was painted silver.
Naturally I didn't weather the bombs. I tried to replicate the cast structure on the bombs by dabbing some Mr. Surfacer 1000 on the with an old stiff paint brush. Painted them yellow in the rear, amsked of a thin stripe and painted the rest OD. I've found a bunch of "configurations" on these stripes when searching the net, but i opted for a single line.

Some full figure shots of the underside...

All of the weathering is done with airbrush, MIG products, oil paints and a 3/0 brush.

One error has been corrected since the pictures were shot. I had chipped the inner portion of the propeller blades. Turns out that these are rubber sleeves, so the chipping is painted over with a rubber color

Hope you like it.