I'm not sure what prompted me to pick this kit up given that I still had two unbuilt Tamiya 'Bolts in my stash at the time. Perhaps it was the N variant, which I'd never built previously.
The kit began life as a Monogram Pro-Modeler offering back in the late '90s, but I got the Revell re-box circa 2012.
I opted for the box-art markings. Interesting story on this 'Bolt - "Li'l Meatie's Meat Chopper" was piloted by Lt. Oscar Perdomo, who was WWII's last "ace-in-a-day" after downing 5 aircraft over Seoul, Korea on 13-August-1945.
Despite an unusual molding choice with the main landing gear, this is a good kit. Went together with a minimal amount of fuss, and just a smidge of filler in the usual places. The unusual molding is that the struts are a part of the rear gear well wall. One would have to do some plastisurgery to display wheels up; wouldn't be a big deal, but that was not on my radar for this build. The kit comes with two wing-mounted drop tanks, 8 rockets, and 2 bombs. All of the rockets had major dimples, and they didn't really look that good despite the dimples. The bombs looked okay, and the drop tanks include a simple decal but no molded detail for the fueling receptacles. Wasn't too bothered by that.
Paints are Vallejo for the chrome yellow tail and stripes, and prop tips, aluminum for the struts and wheels, and tire black for the 3 tires; Mission Models black for the prop blades, and AK Interactive XTreme metallics for the drop tanks and aircraft surfaces. Cockpit is AK Interactive real colors dull dark green, and the wheel wells are Model Master acrylics yellow zinc chromate. The blue rudder stripe is Model Master French blue. I encountered some weather-related issues with the NMF finish, in that I put down a coat of Alclad black primer and allowed to set over night. I put down the base coat of AK dark aluminum, and after that had dried over night, I noticed a tacky feeling to the paint. Best I can figure is the humidity we've seen here in SE Texas the last several days impacted proper curing of the paint. I got some good advice on how to handle the issue, but patience is not always something I have enough of, and opted to spray the build with Gauzy Intermediate, a gloss coat. After that dried over night, the tacky feeling went away.
I sprayed a few panels and the ailerons white aluminum, picked out exhaust areas and the turbo-charger vent with stainless steel, all AK metallics.
Decals performed perfectly, and weathering is a custom mix of brown/black/grey for the exhaust stains and gun stains, ground beige pastels for the tires, and Flory black wash across the entire airframe. Sealed everything with a coat of Vallejo's flat clear.
Had a couple of other issues, neither show in the photos but both are crystal clear when looked at just right: (1) managed to get Tamiya liquid cement under the canopy masking, which marred the top of the canopy; and (2) the Vallejo yellow was fully masked when I sprayed the metallics, yet somehow aluminum found its way onto the yellow surfaces nevertheless, and proved impossible to fully obscure with additional yellow paint. I tried airbrushing another coat of yellow, and the aluminum literally laughed at that effort. Then I dabbed yellow over the offending aluminum overspray not once, but twice, to mostly make the aluminum appear as a shadow in the photos - two are right under the leading edges of the stabilizers on the fuselage.
Next up is a candy bomber - Revell's big C-54 Skymaster. I'll be doing that one in the markings that appear in a famous photo of a C-54 coming in for a landing while people on the ground watch and wave. And a bit unsual for me is the number of NMF builds I've been doing lately. Relatively speaking, I don't do a bunch of those. The C-54 will be my 4th NMF bird this year, and that is after completing 4 NMF aircraft last year and still having 3 more in the to-build pile for this year.