Ok, time for an update.
This time of year is busy, so I have not had the time to work on my P-51 that I would have liked. Here's what I have done since my last post:
First, I have completed spraying the NMF on the fuse and wings, etc. After getting down the base coat, I went back and picked out a few panels for contrast. Once they had time to dry, I masked off and painted the yellow ID bands on the wings and tail stabilizers using Gunze Mr. Color yellow (with a dash of Orange-Yellow), and the olive drab on the nose using Tamiya acrylics.
Once they had some time to dry, I masked off the red tail stripes of the 31st FG. Eagle Strike includes decals for these, but for a couple of reasons, I decided I wanted to paint them instead. First, Eagle Strike provides markings for 4 different aircraft, but they all share a common set of tail stripes. The decal for the stabilizers has 4 stripes, but the pictures of Captain Voll's ship that I have found show only 3 stripes. I scanned the decal sheet into Photoshop, and after some quick napkin math, moved the stripes to evenly space the three I wanted to keep. When I was satisfied, I printed the pattern out, and used it to cut some tape into appropriately sized bands. Here's the result:
I still need to paint the candy stripes on the tail and rudder. Once again, I have printed a pattern (this time just a straight scan of the decal), and plan to cut Tamiya tape. Eagle Strike provides a decal of partial tail ID numbers (only showing the part of the numbers not covered by the red stripes). In order to make sure that my painted stripes line up with these numbers, I also printed a copy of the numbers and covered them with Scotch tape to use as an alignment jig.
While all of that dried, I spent some time on the "fiddly bits" that I had previously ignored:
You can see the ID number "jigs" at the top of the picture.
The wheels are the kit wheels (blech) painted Nato Black. I masked the centers using a plastic Staedtler circle template, and painted them Alclad Aluminum. The landing gear has the Eduard p/e attached, and was sprayed with the same Krylon silver I used for the wings. The prop blades, gear doors and exhausts are all resin after-markets. I painted the exhausts in layers: Flat Black -> Magnesium -> thin red-brown -> very thin rust, and dry brushed silver after they dried. Finally I hit them with a bit of MiG Black Smoke pigment. I also cut pieces of aluminum tubing for the guns, and painted them with Alclad Magnesium (the closest I had to gun metal.) The tail wheel needs to have its centers painted, and everything will eventually get an oil paint wash.
That's all I have for now. My next steps will be to paint the tail stripes and prop spinner red. At some point, I will need to deal with the canopy, and I need to install the scratch built guns and deal with the sloppy holes I drilled to mount them. Still thinking my strategy through on that one...