P-38 Lightning group build - Are we there yet???

Theuns,  Don't be so harsh on yourself.  It takes all the fun away from all of us.  It really looks like you've pulled it off very well.  I don't know how you can work that small. I recently got a magnifier to help me work on 1/48 stuff.  I think you have to be a watchmaker to detail 1/72 kits.

hk, I like.  The exhaust staining looks great.  I may have to reevaluate my own.  Did you have to squat the main gear and/or extend the nose gear?  It appears to set more like a real P-38 than what the OOB Monogram version.  I've already slightly squatted my main gear and am thinking about extending the nose gear.  Some of my reference photos really have that nose up in the air.  Also, did you use PE on the gear doors?  They are outstanding.  It must be PE.  Rick.

Theuns , I think your Hasegawa P-38 came out really well ;

Nice work

I've made a little more progress on my 1/72 Revell P-38M ;

I've organized some ground crew figures and a tow vehicle . The cockpit is glued in place and I'm starting to glue in the engines into the tail booms ...

You dont see much of the cockpit consol and control lever once the wing top section fits in place ...

So far everything has fitted in place nicely , Revell stamped their name on the lower wing flap and the kit is dated 1982 . I hope the rest of the build goes smoothly .

                             John .

Theuns - hey buddy, anyone that completes a -38 must be special breed. As long as she's done & you've learned something you've got to be happy. Thanks for bringing Marge to the party!

Helo - good to see that you have a security detachment keeping an eye on your build? How much of your engines are we going to be able to see when all is complete?

Rick, the main gear is as it came provided by Monogram. The only thing I changed were the wheels. Well, and I added detail to the struts but I didn't change the attitude of the nose at all.
The gear doors were enhanced with sheet styrene and bits and pieces of scrap I had gathered. One of the main gear doors is scratch made from sheet, as the kit was missing one when I got it from ebay. All the doors had the lightening holes drilled out and mounting points added.

There's some nice work going on here guys. You folks working on the 72nd stuff, my hats off to you. I don't have the patience to do that tiny stuff anymore. Or the eyesight for that matter. I'll be checking in daily to see how things are going.

The tail booms and wings were a reasonable fit to the center fuselage section , there is only a small gap on the inner wing / engine nacelle join , so I'm happy about that .

 I dry fitted the nose cone into position but sadly the two middle guns dont come through the openings in the nose . I suppose I can extend them with a small piece of 1mm round plastic rod .

You don't see all that much of the engines unfortunatly but I will still pose the engine access panels in the open position .

I'll let the glue dry overnight and putty the joins first thing tomorrow .

                       John .

I was having a look around google for some pic's of the nose cone and machine gun set up and came across this pic ;

I didn't realize that the two middle guns juat barely poke through the openings , so mine are okay as they are .

I also found this pic of a P-38 under going maintenance ;

This gives me some idea of work platforms to try and scratch build .

                                                               John .

HK.. Sweet looking forktailed devil!

nice job !

Can't... stop... cutting things... up!

I looked at how much room the radar operator's gear took up, front-to-back and compared it to where Revell wants me to mount the operator directly to the rear section. Just couldn't do it. So, I removed the radar gear that I had already attached, and sanded it down some, took 1/16 or so off of it, and re-glued it to the bulkhead. (I think I may have had it moubt too low to start with anyway.

Then I got out the razor saw again, and sliced off that bulkhead at the rear of the radar office.

Now I need something for the seat (stolen from the pilot's cockpit, that seat was replaced with aftermarket resin) to mount to, made a little bulkhead for that.

And then I went about adding some details to the sidewalls. The sidewalls are my thinnest sheet styrene (.01??) so they can flex a little to fit the contours of the sidewalls. (and I cut them long so I have something to hold onto while priming them - I'll cut them to shape just before I add them.) Boxes are sheet styrene, all the wiring is made from those clear plastic "strings" that hold pricetags on clothing. First time I tried using them, they seem to react well to Tamiya glue, I'll see what they look like after priming & painting. Note the 95% completed "office" sitting to the right. There are still some levers etc that can be added if I choose, I figure they'll jest get knocked off if I add them right now!

I have learned that 1/72 is defenately not my scale of choice! Especially on a P-38 LOL!

I must say that I am realy impressed by the level of skill and detail i see on this thread !

Now atleast I can just sit back,relax and wach.

Theuns

Guys.. remember.. building a -38 is like..building 2 planes!!  lol..

Good work everyone!!

Vance,, dude.. any orginal plastic still letft ?? lol

p38jl

Guys.. remember.. building a -38 is like..building 2 planes!!  lol..

Good work everyone!!

Vance,, dude.. any orginal plastic still letft ?? lol

Uhhhhh, starting to feel like I'm scratchbuilding THIS one! It's addictive - the more I cut off, the more likely I seem to be to look at the next step & say, "well if I worked on X, then I'd better fix this up too...".

I think I've decided that I'm going to leave the rudders alone despite offsetting everything else that will move. There are just too many tabs (hinges?) that need to be cut around, as well as that crazy area where it intersect with the end of the boom. (Although I will sit and stare at it again once more before committing!)

I do need to take a look at the area where the canopies meet on the nightfighter though. It kinda looks like (in the kit) the canopies just kind of attach to each other but not to any kind of support or brace. Ther has got to be something there. Right??

Helo- The guns were staggered so each one came out of the openings a different length. Here's a picture of the right side.

Mike

Hey Vance,  What about cutting off the shroud over the instrument panel?  I've seen several pics where the pilot's preference was to remove the shroud.  But the night fighter may have been a different story.  I chickened out cutting my version's out.   My good news is that I've finished my Academy F5 Photo Recon.  I'll try to walk you around it.  First of all, I was very happy with the fit.  Cockpit and wheel bay subassemblies sat in very snug.  Center pod and booms closed up very nicely around these assemblies.  Probably the roughest joints were the boom/wing unions just aft of the turbo chargers.  Any pics that I had seen of F5's showed them pretty heavily weathered, so I pre-shaded the panel lines pretty heavily.  I looked at colors of PRU Blue and Haze, and saw quite a range of the color blue on the F5's.  So, I held my thumb at eye level and squinted, with my other hand I threw a dart at the color chart.  I liked the shade of Krylon "True Blue".  I decanted the Krylon and airbrushed it on, upper and lower.  I did use a white primer underneath and grey primer on the upper surfaces to give a slight shade difference.  It is not really noticeable.  I lightly sanded off many edges exposing the underneath colors.  I enhanced these worn spots with silver artist pencil.  I pulled decals from all over the decal box.  Markings portray a fictitious recon bird from either the 8th or 9th Air Force.  "Squirrelbate" seemed like an appropriate name for an unarmed low flier.

I slightly squatted the main gear and extended the nose gear to give it that classic tail down stance.  I also pivoted the nose wheel, because I like that look.

WW, sweet looking F-5! I think you did well with the choice of color there, looks perfect to me.

WW,,, sweet! what blue did u use ? very nice

Very nice F-5E. Your are correct on them being pretty worn. F-5E's were delivered unpainted and were painted with British PRU Blue at the depot level or squadron level in the UK. No primer or anything so the paint would come off in no time. Have seen a lot of them missing paint all over the nose and front of the engines. Nice job on the strips. I have photo's of F-5's dated on D-Day and they are painted on very well, no slop job.

My big project for some day is to do a factroy fresh  F-5B in synthetic haze blue in 1/32. There's a color photo of one on the cover of an old issue Airpower or some similar magazine. Will have to dig it out and post a pic of it.

Here are a couple of my F-5's in 1/48. Not real happy with the blue but hey it just gives more reasons to build more.

Academy P-38E with Monogram F-5B nose to make an F-5A.

Academy F-5E.

Mike

Very nice F-5!  Love the turned nose wheel, nice touch!

Wabash - great job on SquirrelBate, loving the blue you went with. Final pic has been added up front. For anyone that hasn't noticed, as I'm adding the final pics I'm also adding a link to the page that has all of your completed pics on it. Should make it easier to browse through everyone's completed builds.

Well I started to get Glacier Girl all closed up for paint and a magazine I subscribe to did an article on Glacier Girl when she took her post restoration flight and I noticed in the pics the frame over the radio area.  Well I check the Squadron canopy and the kit one and no frame.  Closer examination of the pics I noticed the canopy was sitting on top of the frame so I broke down and scratch built the frame.  Why am I making more work for myself? Anyway spent tonight putting the frame in and ensuring it fits; well it does under the thicker kit canopy, so here's to hoping the vac canopy causes no problems.

The frame:

If it looks a little shiny, the paint was still wet when I took the pictures.

Nice job on the frame-up B17Pilot, wonder if that was original, or done only for the restoration? I think that is tonight's project for me, adding a frame of sone kind in the area where the pilot's canopy and RIO's canopy meet - there had to be something there to hold it all together! Checking my references now,

Don't know if it is original or not, but there are no radios (in the pics at least) behind the pilot's seat, so don't know where the modern day ones are hidden.

It was original on early Lightnings. Here's a few close ups.

On the P-38M the rear canopy closed on to the back of the frame of the cockpit canopy. Also the antenna attaches at the back of the hinge on the rear canopy like it did at the back of the hinge on regular P-38's.

Mike

hmmm, I'll have to look at the canopy pieces that are supplied with the Revell, see if anything extr is really needed.

Well, I've got a lot of catching up to do. One word, homework...

Theuns, I think Marge turned out great! 1/72 is like a different world to me and not easy to work with.

Helo H-34, your build is looking good. I've eyeballed that kit several times at one LHS and it's tempted me. Guess I was kind of afraid it would go together like this old Monogram kit. Think I'm going to hold out for a 1/32 Trumpeter some day.

Wabash Wheels, your F-5 is gorgeous! I really like it and the blue you went with looks perfect.

B-17Pilot, nice job. I hadn't noticed that frame till you mentioned it. Checked out the pictures I have and sure enough, there it is. Did you add the opening in the fuselage top for the boarding ladder? The Monogram version doesn't have it and I wish I had thought to open it up.

Vance, detail away buddy! We still have about 3 months.

P-38Guy, thanks for all the information and pics you've been posting.

I've gotten a little done. A little over the weekend but mostly today. Added some shims to the booms and got them fitting a little better.

Epoxied some weight behind and too the cowlings. Not quite enough, will still have to add some in the nose. I used some .22LR bullets I pulled from a box of ammo that didn't want to shoot in anything I own...

The gun barrels in my kit were pretty rough. Nothing round about them. I cut up some brass .062 tubing and .030 rod and made some new ones. Didn't add the step down at the muzzle or drill them out yet. Took a little while but they're better than they were.

Got the cowlings glued on the booms. They didn't match up very well so I had to putty and sand but have to add the seam back. Went ahead and glued the booms on. I think they lined up ok but there's still a bit of filling and sanding to do.

That's about all for now. Not going to sand them all the way off but I've been working on sanding down the multitude of rivets a little. They are pretty much all there on the 1:1, just not so prominent. When I get to that point I do intend to go with NMF so who knows what it's gonna look like in the end...

Tony

WOW , Excellent work Tony

Replacing those gun barrels with brass tubing is quite impressive .

Great stuff .

                              John

.... Tony's building 1/48 machine gun barrels?!

(I picked up my first razor saw just for this P38 so I'm not sure how far I can push it!) OK, seriously, how are you cutting the tube & rod to length? Razor saw or a hacksaw maybe?

Looking good, Tony. Good idea replacing the guns, almost did that myself but in the end I made the kit parts round. Would have been easier to simply replace them.

Vance, tubing like that is usually cut with either a tubing cutter or a Dremel type tool with a cut off wheel. Either way, there's a bit of clean up after the cut is made to remove burrs. I used a miniature tubing cutter for the tubing I used on the props.

http://www.micromark.com/MINI-TUBING-CUTTER-1and8--7and8-CAPACITY,6728.html

The one I have will cut smaller than the 1/8" this once claims.

The only brass I tend to use is for replacing pitot tubes, or on this kit, I tried using some for lengths of hydraulics. (Went in well, but look too "clean" to my eye, will have to track down some thin wire for the next time.) Cutoff wheel w/ Dremel - will have to add one of those to the wish list! The thin guage rod I used this time, I rolled under an old Xacto blade until it cut through, took a little while but it worked. Tube would probably collapse before cutting using that method though.

Wingman_kz

B-17Pilot, nice job. I hadn't noticed that frame till you mentioned it. Checked out the pictures I have and sure enough, there it is. Did you add the opening in the fuselage top for the boarding ladder? The Monogram version doesn't have it and I wish I had thought to open it up.

It's in the instructions to cut it out.  I almost missed it when I went to close up the wings, then just before I added glue I noticed the slot, checked the instructions and sure enough had to cut it out plus the bottom one.  Almost missed them altogether.  Thankfully I saw it before I glued the wing together.

B-17Pilot, thanks. The top of the Mono fuselage has the outline of a panel there. I may still open it up.

Me, cut-off discs and Dremels don't get along. They break VERY easily and I have an aversion to getting hit with the shards. They make saw blades for Dremels but you don't want to use them close to your fingers. Or any other body parts. I have a little electric chop saw that uses a 3 inch blade. But the thing all three have in common is they will send tiny pieces flying once they've cut through. Always intended to get one of those miniature tubing cutters but never did, it's on my want list. I just use an old razor saw blade. It's worn down and takes longer but doesn't grab on the wall of tubing as much as a new blade. So, I just scribe a mark, clamp in a vise and cut as close to it as I can then clean them up with a file. You can slip small pieces of tubing over a piece of rod to help hold it while you clean up the end. Clean up one end before cut it off and you'll only have one to deal with after it's cut. Wasn't something I really wanted to do but the guns in this kit didn't have enough material to make round.

And, believe it or not, I actually drilled out the muzzles this evening. Still haven't figured out how to rifle them...

Here's how they look in place. Haven't glued them(or sighted them in yet), just holding them.

My camera doesn't do extreme close-ups very well but you can kinda see the muzzles.

And here's how I did it. I did the longest barrel with one ring first and it went pretty easy. Just got lucky I guess. On the next one, I couldn't keep the drill bit centered. I fiddled with it for a while then remembered something I had done on plastic before. 0.030 rod inside .062 brass tubing is a bit of a loose fit. .030 rod inside .062 aluminum tubing is a snug fit. Slightly thicker walls I guess. So, if you cut a short piece of .062 aluminum tubing and slip it over a piece of .030 rod, chuck up an .030 bit in your pin vise, insert it in the other end of the tubing and give it a few turns you can make enough of a dent to give you a place to start your smaller bit.

Then you can very slowly drill them as deep as you'd like. Man, I sure wish I'd bought that little Shirline mill and lathe I looked at a few years ago...

Tony