68GT
So I got started and noticed a problem with the vinyl tires. They seem to have some type of gold color contamination. Does anyone have some suggestions as to what I can do?
It looks like the issue continues onto the sprues which would lead me to believe it's something in the vinyl. Rustoleum may work for you, but I would test on sprue first. If that fails I would contact Revell.
Did anyone else notice the cover story for this month's FSM magazine? Timely indeed!
In any event, I also wanted to toss out an update as I plod along slowly on my 51B's. After several coats and some retaping and repainting I think I have the invasion stripes done. Turns out bare metal foil is not so great on painted surfaces and the white ran under pretty significantly. So I retaped with Tamiya tape over the white and gave both aircraft another hit with the grey and green. I'll still need to do some drybrushing to help out some areas later on, but I think I'm pretty much done airbrushing the grey and green (for the moment).
So the stripes are done. I'm sure someone will notice the tail on one is striped whereas it isn't on the other. The Kitsworld decals I have for Miss Dallas and Ill Wind denote that Ill Wind had recently been repainted when the photos were taken and that the tail stripes were removed as were the red outlines for the fuselage letters whereas Miss Dallas was still sporting both. So it should add some nice variance for 2 aircraft from the same squadron that will add to visual appeal.
Next step is to prep for red paint. I'll be hitting the noses and the step here marks on the flaps with insignia red (that's what I've got according to my color chart anyway). So I spent my bench time this morning taping all that off. I still need to tape for the red bands on the alclad drop tanks, but that should go pretty quickly (it's all straight lines and no angles). As an aside, I stumbled across a pretty good trick for masking the compound curves on the nose if anyone is interested as a straight strip won't work. One of the schemes that decals are included for in this kit has a checkerboard nose with decals included (if I remember correctly, the Tamiya 1/48 P-51D also has a scheme like this). I used the handy tracing paper Tamiya includes to protect the decals and traced the aft edge of the the 2 decals, the cut out the curves and transferred them to pieces of wide Tamiya tape. From there it was a simple issue of peeling the tape and putting it in the right place. Hopefully it'll work well!
That's where I'm at for the moment, after I get the red done I'll do some drybrushing to tighten up my demarcation lines and then fade the rudders a bit (still haven't decided if I want to do this with an airbrush, drybrush, or weathering powders), and then clear coat! Thanks for looking!
Groot