Your probably right. Its a 74-ish year old photograph. I'll remember that for my next B. This pig is no prize winner anyways.
That said, I'm gonna go with done here. To recap, it's in the markings of 15th Pursuit Group 47th Fighter Squadron 2nd Lt. George Welch at Wheeler Field on December 7, 1941. Welch and another pilot, 2nd Lt. Kenneth Taylor, both still clad in tuxedos from an event the previous evening, got airborne and scores kills on the invading Japanese. Welch initially took off with only 30 cal ammo in the wing guns and claimed two Val dive bombers. After reloading, he got another Val and a Zero fighter. Both men would be awarded the Distinguished flying Cross for their heroism.
Now onto the kit. How much time do you got?....
To sum it up, if your looking for something simplistic that resembles a P-40, its fine. The best way to describe this kit is "generic", from the cockpit to the landing gear. If you want a bit more, like a replica of the real Hawk 81, get ready for surgery or perhaps look elsewhere. On this one, I grafted the Monogram belly onto the kit and made new radiator flaps out of styrene stock. I replaced the cockpit, wheels, wing guns and the flaps to spruce it up. I also replaced the prop blades with those from the Hasegawa P-38. Other additions were a bulletproof windscreen out of clear stock and I used a spare Eduard Sptifire tail wheel which is much better than the kit example. I used Starfighter Decals which were some of the best I've ever used.
On the finished model, I added smoke colored invisible thread radio wires to finish it off. As I sat there looking at the finished model, something just didn't seem right. It seems to me that either the landing gear is too compresed (short stance?) or the prop is too big in diameter. I suppose thats the story of this build....
On conclusion, any future Hawk 81 builds will be done with the Trumpeter kit, until the elusive state of the art kit is offered. I'm sure we'll see another 109 first though...
