Hi Lancaster Lover,
I have built it up over the years in a lot of different forms from the present Big Beautiful Doll/Miss Marilyn to the old Detroit Miss. I added Gunfighter a Squadron mate to Miss Marilyn sharing the NMF red stripe and green top surface to the fuselage with a yellow rudder with a Red Mustang on it's back legs. I had to handpaint the name but it came out okay. I have also used it to make up a few other famous P 51s.
Most of my modifictions to the basic kit were driling out the Canopy frame center support with minidrills to more closely resemble the real plane, adding copper wire details to the radio set since it is out in the open under all that glass. I also added a few items to the cockpit after checking references and websites for suggestions. Big Beautiful Doll had the ANS 13 radar on the tail and a second antenna under the rear of the fuselage. These can be added by using fine copper wire. Squadron's P 51 Mustang in Action is a good ready reference, the cover is Big Beautiful Doll in flight and inside you will find a B & W of it in it's revetment.
The kit also gives you an open gunbay to play with. Careful painting washing and drybrushing will really make it look good. I white glued the panels in place when I painted and decalled the whole plane then used a new #11 blade to open the panels, separate them into the proper 3 pieces and added cut sheet brass bits to represent the open latches that held them in place and a couple of prop rods to give a couple of extra places to glue to.
I also drilled out the holes in the two vent panels in the nose and the vents in the sides of the fuselage. Revell does give you the right little nubs to represent the scoop features already molded in place for the vents under the wing on either side of the fuselage. When I glued the plane together I glued the fuselage halves together then made up the three main pieces to the wings lining up the edges of the wing panels upper halves and single lower piece. When I glued the whole thing together I didn't have any gaps at the wing roots or an undesirable shape to the wings. I masked off the parts that I wanted to NMF with Model Master Aluminum and shot the green on first. figuring the paint to be easier to mask off than the Metallizer. The red Stripe that separates the NMF from the green needs to go all the way from the cowl check pattern to the rear of the wings and completely under the AC to the opposite sides checkered nose panels. Since I had already built Big Beautiful Doll I had extra decal to make the shortness up, but red paint would also work in a pinch. Doing the paint part before the Metallizer helped when it came time to mask and shoot the NMF Aluminum a lot. Metallizer doesn't mask well at all!
Good luck on the kit, I look forward to seeing pictures.
Jay modelnut4
AKA treadhead 1952
Las Vegas, NV