My latest build was one that I'd long wanted to build.
I say "long" because for much of my life, the only Twin Mustang generally available was Monogram's 1/72 kit, which I built several times. There was another kit out there that was well known to be a problematic kit from ModelCraft that was 1/48. I shied away from that one due to its reputation. Then Modelsvit, a company that I had never heard of, put out this kit in the 2020-2021 timeframe. I snapped it up.
This is actually a short-run type of kit, but unlike others that I have done, this one does not have all the warts that you typically find in such releases. Well, for the most part. I did find a few troublesome issues in this build, mostly with the alignment pins that were so tiny as to not even really be there. Fit of the wings to the fuselages is not bad but was finicky. And the landing gear fit trended toward difficult to decipher how to actually attach them based on a reading of the kit instructions. But all in all, this is a good kit that I would recommend to anyone interested in building a larger scale Twin Mustang.
And it is a pretty big model. While researching the F-82, I learned that this was not simply North American taking the fuselage of a P-51 and attaching two of them to a set of wings. It was a new aircraft altogether that just happened to look like a 'Stang. I found a review that showed a photo of the Modelsvit fuselage half next to a Hasegawa P-51D fuselage half; the F-82 is quite a larger airplane than was the P-51. I probably should have taken a photo of one of my 48th scale P-51s alongside this build to showcase the size differential.
The last Monogram 72nd scale F-82 I built I did in a natural metal with red wingtips scheme, and without the big RADAR bulb. I opted not to repeat myself with this build by taking on the challenge of making a black aircraft look presentable. Black is a difficult color to deal with, especially in cases where the entire airframe is that color. I had read that these aircraft didn't see a lot of serious weathering (not sure if that's true or not), but I opted to use Black Stynylrez primer as my paint of choice rather than Tamiya Flat Black. I didn't want it to be terribly dirty based on my earlier finding, but I also did not want it to be shiny black either. Interior colors are Mission Models US Interior Green, Model Master Yellow Zinc Chromate, AK Interactive XTreme Metals Steel and Aluminum, and other random colors where called for.
The weathering is sparse - ground up gray pastels to effect both the engine exhaust and gun residue. I used Tamiya weathering pastels to get the wear along the wing roots (although the one photo I took of that area directly was not in focus, so not sure if this weathering will be visible in any of the other pics).
Next up for me is a huge kit that I have had in the stash for a decade - Airfix's 1/24 Hawker Typhone Mk. II. My only previous experience with the scale was Airfix's Mosquito - an experience that soured me on modeling and took me a few months to reacquire an interest in model building. But the Typhoon only has 1 engine and is a smaller airframe. Although the parts count is still very high. I fully expect that build to take most of the next 2-3 months.