I've been pretty busy lately, and I've been a little scattered on my builds, but this actually marks one year since returning to this hobby, and I am having more fun than ever.
One of the things that kept me busy was work, but others were play, including the opportunity to meet legendary ace Bud Anderson. He's well in his 90s and is totally with it mentally. He's funny, kind and a great guy to talk to. I picked up his memoir and had him sign it. It was a great day.
As for my P-51, I didn't tell him I am not building Old Crow (I believe Eduard is releasing a 1/48 P-51 family, and I plan to make one of his planes out of that kit). Here is my progress on Col. John Meyer's Petie 2nd.
I am building it with the 1/48 Tamiya kit, and at last update, I had the cockpit mostly done. Here it is together with the cowling painted Humbrol French Blue enamel over a Tamiya flat black preshade.
Here are some progress pics as I played with Alclad. I first sprayed Alclad Aqua Gloss on the whole model. As an acrylic, if left with enough time to dry, it doesn't melt under the Alclad lacquer paints like their black base does for some (I have had decent results with the black base, but wanted to try aqua gloss).
I sprayed the wings Alclad Duraluminum, and then coated it with Aqua Gloss, masked the wings and rudder, leaving the gun access panels uncovered, and then sprayed airframe aluminum. Once that was done, I coated with aqua gloss and sprayed magnesium on the piece behind the exhaust, then sprayed a couple panels with polished aluminum.
I will say that I am not 100 percent thrilled with the panel variation, as it looks too stark to me for this plane. (Not to mention the airframe aluminum is probably tooshiny for Petie 2nd). I do have some techniqes I want to practice with this now that I know I can work with a clear coat as a base for the shiny lacquers.
With the decals, I am tired of being burned by thick Tamiya decals, and this isn't one of their kits that comes with nice ones, so I bought the Eagle Strike set for P-51Ds. It's printed by Cartograf, and the decals went down flawlessly.
A note on applying decals over Alclad: I previously painted a plane polished aluminum over the alclad black base and liked it. Alclad says you can put decals down right over the metals, which is true. However, when I clear-coated with Alclad Klear Kote, it changed the color of the metal, but the original color was still visible under the carrier film. It wasn't silvering, but it wasn't good.
This time around, I clear coated the whole thing with aqua gloss, applied decals, and clear coated again with aqua gloss. Despite the sheer number of coats on the model (There are 6 coats on the gun bay doors), they are thin enough that panel line washes still work great).
TL;DR - Clear coat it before the decals, then clear coat it again.
I have since applied a Flory grime panel line wash. It's a brownish color and doesn't show too much contrast, but I am going for subtlety on it here. I plan to do some minor weathering on it before finishing it.
Sory for the long post. I guess it's been a while since I did any work on this one. Thanks for reading (or at least looking at the pics).
-BD-