Hi.  As a bit of a goof I wanted to see if I could marry an old Dragon kit that had been sitting on my shelf for a good long time, with a set of Kits-World P-40 Warhawks of the RAF and AVG decals and create a P-51D Flying Tiger.  I picked Chuck Older's aircraft since his had a distinctive blue sharks mouth.

Started laying down a base coat of Model Master Acryl Dark Earth, applied irregularly since I know the AVG P-40s had lots of paint issues.  Underneath color is MM Hellblau RLM 65.

Then used rolled blue tack to outline the camo area for the MM dark green - and learned that next time to use it on a gloss coat as it left a residue on the flat base.  Oh well - it did mostly wash off.

The staining mostly washed off, but some was left but seemed to mostly disappear after applying the gloss coat for decals and then the overcoat of flat.

The gloss coat provided a nice base for the decals, which actually were pretty simple.  The nose provided a bit of a challenge.

With careful positioning, the sharks mouth fits very well, and only needed a bit of blue touch up paint where the decal didn't quite fit right at the front.  It only took a couple of applications of Microset to get the decal to snuggle down very well.  The decals were extremly easy to apply.

I wrapped the top of the mouth under where the spinner goes just to ensure I had a good fit before I trimmed it off.

Top view, before the flat coat.

Here she is with a nice view of those beautiful decals nicely set and before any weathering. 

Side view.  I really like the look of a camo P-51D!

Obligatory cockpit pic. I used the kits PE seatbelts (not a big fan, but they were there).

And a final top view (I did add the trim tabs to the elevators after I saw I forgot them in this pic).  I've also added some weathering for exhaust and gun power residue.

This was something of a quick build, mostly to get the paint on it and those decals to see how they would look.  Am thinking of doing something with the really nice Tamiya kit and doing this up right.  So many subject, so little time...   Thanks for looking!

Chris