Bench time has been at a premium lately, but I'm in for an update. For starters, check out that gear bay. Finally someone got it right (Oh yeah..Meng did too). My research has shown that the correct painting for a "factory" P-51 gearbay is silver with the rear spar in Zinc Chromate. I painted it accordingly.
The thing goes together like a dream. I had zero issues. The control surfaces are all seperate so I posed them a bit.
How about them machine guns? The best I've seen so far. They even nailed the inboard fifties which are recessed. On this kit these are inserts which fit fairly well.
The windscreen design is ingenius too. No awkward seam where the glass meets metal, like on the Tamiya kit. The fit is great too. I went ahead and masked the windows and added the piece before paint.
Time to start painting. The 357th FG has a red and yellow checkered nose with a yellow stripe on the spinner. My strategy will be to paint in the checkers but use a decal for the spinner. I've tried many times to paint in this spinner stripe and I can never get it right. It always comes out lop-sided...I surrender! Fortunately I have an old Eagle Strike sheet that supplies these and they work well. Anyways, I started withXF-1 Flat Black then added XF-7 Flat Red.
Now I had to add the yellow checkers. I used an old 357 decal sheet to match the size and shape of the checkers with Tamiya tape. This was sort of tedious but I managed.
I extended the length backwards to ensure it was long enough. The correct size will be taped off before the NMF application.
Checkers are done...not to shabby. Time to tape it off.
I then sprayed Alclad Duraluminum. This is my go-to base shade for combat aircraft, not too shiny or too dull.
I sprayed the panels by the exhaust Magnesium and other various panels in Dark Aluminum, Semi Matte Aluminum, and Aluminum. This is perhaps my favorite part of this process. It starts to come alive!
I was going to throw down the Olive Drab anti-glare panel, but I ran out of time. I must say, this one has been awesome so far. A couple nit-picks, if you want to call them that. I don't particularly like the light grey almost white colored plastic that Airfix uses. I prefer the normal darker grey as its easier to see seams. Also, a couple of areas, such as the flaps and belly radiator area are lacking in detail compared to Tamiya. Not a deal breaker, just an observation.