Completed 1/48 Tamiya P-51D Louisiana Heatwave

NUTS! I almost forgot! Special thanks to mrmike and Don Wheeler for helping with some vexing airbrush issues, allowing me to complete this project! 

You did a great job! I'll take your word for it that you made mistakes. I can't see any! 

Thank you for the kind words, guys!

Tempestjohnny, it's my first aircraft kit I've completed in 30 years, but I started one about 7 or 8 years ago and barely got the cockpit done before losing it in a move. I have also built a few autos in the last several years and learned a few things from those, particularly laying down a nicer finish.

hogfanfs, you're very kind to say so, but I worked really hard at repairing or covering up the mistakes! I touched up the paint in a couple spots, threw it in the dehydrator before taking it down to show the finished product to a very helpful person at my LHS, only to realize that I accidentally upped the temp on the dehydrator. This made the gear legs a bit soft, so my poor little plane sagged a bit on the right gear. Gave me fits trying to get it back to normal, hehe.

Thanks again guys!

TF

mississippivol

Nicely done!

 

Thank you very much!

Wow! It certainly doesnt look like you were out of the aircraft scene for 3 decades. Great build!

Super-duper job on that Mustang. Can't tell that you made any mistakes on it. 

No way, 30 years?  That's amazing, and what mistakes?  I see a very well made P-51 sir!

Toshi

Thanks again for all the kind words, y'all, it's very encouraging!

For those who say they don't see any mistakes, I admit I was a bit mental about trying to cover or correct them. Most of the mistakes stemmed from trying techniques with which I was unfamiliar, or from leaving masking on too long. 

For instance, I had to repaint the wings twice, as I left the masking (Tamiya tape) on when I put it in the dehydrator to speed curing. For multiple cycles.  I had wonderfully clean, sharp demarcations...but I also had marks that showed through when I repainted. So, another resand, another mask job, another repaint, then spot repairs because I forgot to vacuum out the paint booth before hand, lol.

I tried using BMF for the first time as a canopy mask. Again, great lines, but even though I removed the masks soon after paint was sprayed, I had bad residue left behind on the clear portions. I chalk this up to using 10-year old BMF. I'm at a loss, otherwise. Anyway, I cleaned up the residue with some paper towel slightly dampened with alchohol, but that wrecked the Future coating. *SIGH* Re-dip in Future, redo the affected area, then scratched the inside of the windscreen somehow. Can I stomp on it, now?? But no, I took the more mature road, and carefully applied yet more Future with a very soft brush to the affected area, and hey, whaddya know, it became almost presentable.

And the one that I'm still scratching my head about: after it was ALLL done, I'm showing it to a helpful LHS employee and I notice a fine crack, aft of the canopy, foreward of the antenna. I've honestly no idea how it got there, because it wasn't there even after I dropped it. It just appeared one day.  I thnk this crack might be visible in the pics if you can zoom in.

I think the biggest lesson learned from this return to aircraft modeling is this: what really made a difference for me was realizing that my chances of completing a build with ZERO mistakes are somewhere between nil and zilch, so it's how I react to and deal with said mistakes that will make the difference.

Anyway, thanks again for the encouragement!

TF