weathered352 by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
left by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
1/48 Meng P-51D
Paints: Vallejo Metal Color, Golden High Flow
Weathering: Gamblin Fastmatte oils, Iwata Com.Art acrylics
This is a wrap for the Meng P-51. I can't say that I'm very happy with the build. The kit was a kind of Bandai which made it very difficult to dry fit. The instructions were very poor and didn't indicate any kind of build sequences - the problem is that there are several parts that must be done in sequence. You'll just have to find out yourself. Sometimes the fit was extremely good - the wing roots are perfect. Other parts were close, but still required prep - and prep is harder when you're assembling major assemblies into huge pegs/holes. There weren't any seams - that was nice. But I'm thinking that Meng will not be doing many more kits this way - a kit with over 100 parts and supposedly made to assemble without glue? And as noted earlier, the parts had very heavy and coarse sprue gate connections - almost every part required prep. This kit took a while. And it wasn't cheap.
The paints were fine - Vallejo Model Color metallics are outstanding for a water based paint. YouTube channels have also been impressed. This is a big deal for someone like me who has no spray booth and can't use solvent based materials. The Cartograph decals were excellent.
When I came to weathering I was not in a good position. A better modeler than yours truly would roll with the punches. I was discouraged with the kit and frankly just wanted to get it done. So I cut corners. And cutting corners led to a few errors - one a whopper which we won't discuss. (I also lost an aileron which I had to scratch build. And, when assembling the last piece of the landing gear I dropped the plane - bad vibes all around.)
Weathering an natural metal finish WWII fighter presents problems. On one hand planes were replaced often in WWII so there were always new aircraft coming in. (People were very slow to dispose of old ones though. There were a lot of pilots in the USAAF.) So were they shinny metal planes? You can find pics that make that case. On the other hand any student of WWII aircraft knew that they were all very "hot" planes with extremely advanced performance. Anyway you look at it, in that era, a fighter (bombers were worse) was going to burn a lot of oil and leak fluids all over the bottom. In addition they flew off grass fields which invariably meant mud. And add into things groundcrew crawling all over. I painted my Mustang in the colors of the 352d Fighter Group - one of the elite 8th AF units. The plane at the top is from the 352d and, as you can see, shows a lot of exhaust, fluids etc, most prominently just behind the exhaust and also underneath the national markings on the side where the air scoop exits. The 352d's top gun was George Preddy - the war's top P-51 ace with 27 victories - and his plane was none too tidy:
Preddy by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
I did watch a YT video about the 357th FG - another Mustang unit with the 8th. Ace Bud Anderson recalled that on one mission he was separated from his flight and came in late - a cause for worry for his crew chief and groundcrew. (Every pilot I ever interviewed - and there were quite a few 20 years back or so - claimed that his fighter belonged to the crew chief and he was allowed to fly it as a kind of loan.) Anyway, Anderson came out the next morning and was startled when he looked at his plane - "it was silver!." Turns out the groundcrew had given the plane a proper bath with gasoline and tidied it up. This wasn't my finest hour, but it will pass the 5' away observation test nicely. P-51 was a handsome fighter.
Checkmate - been very nice to have participated in several of your "75th Anniversary Builds." I would have been in for at least one extra build - probably two - except that Finescale dropped me from their mailing list until late October or so. So thanks much - it's been fun.
A few pics below.
Eric
rt-rear by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
RT-FT by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
left-R by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr