I'm moving along on this one and have put the P-40 on the back burner temporarily, mostly because I want to see how this one builds up badly. I built the gear bay. It's very well detailed but mine was quite warped and I had a lot of trouble gluing it down. I believe this contributed to some fit issues, but more on later.
Vey well detailed. Per my research, this is the correct way to paint the P-51 bay. Only the back wing spar should be ZC, at least as they left the factory.
I eventually got the airframe together. I had trouble joining the wing leading edges because the gear bay was too tall. I had to sand/Dremel off the top (inside) off the bay piece a bit to make clearance Clarence. I must have messed up slightly in the positioning of the bay somehow. I also had some slight wing root gaps (see the putty). It was probably attributed to the bay as well. A chain reaction if you will. It was nothing insurmountable and I got it done. Also, the machine gun inserts fit nice and they are nicely done.
I added the flaps in the down position. Like the Tamiya kit, I had some slight issues with alignment of the lower radiator seam and the resulting sanding cost some detail. They should have followed Airfix's lead here and made this area a separate piece.
Seams were checked then it was time to start painting. I figured I would knock out the 55th FG nose checkers first. I used XF-26 Deep Green and sprayed the nose and prop hub.
I used one of the "checkers" from the kit decals (which has a 357th FG bird as an option) and cut it out. I then cut the checkers out of Tamiya tape and added them. This is the 357th FG plane I did last year which will show the gist of how I did it. Yeah, I know, I should replace that mirror. It's seen better days.
Looks like this when done. On a side note, I scribed in the top cowl panel line and added the fasteners that Eduard completely forgot with a needle chucked into a pin vice. I recall having to do this on the Hasegawa kit too. I think they dropped the ball here and should have followed Tamiya's lead with a separate top piece. I know, nit-picking, but this isn't exactly a cheap kit.
Next I sprayed XF-4 Yellow with a drop of XF-7 Red. After the tape is removed it turned out like this. It will be taped off where appropriate for the rest of the painting. Fortunately I have a decal from a 357th FG sheet for the prop hub stripe. I've tried to paint this on in the past and failed miserably. This is a surprisingly difficult task, at least for me.
Next it will be primed and I will fire down some Alclad.