Real world has really gotten in the way of important things. Hopefully back to modeling.
Good looking builds - do like stringbags as long as people don't praise the technology. Definite funk appeal and lots of history.
Back to the Airfix P-40 Tomahawk. As noted earlier, this is going to be a Desert AF fighter - no particular plane just no shark teeth - never shark teeth. Desert AF Tomahawks need very heavy fading and very irregular surface colors. So we need serious black basing. I made my own colors with High Flow and I think they look fine. The basic camo is down - it's the standard RAF Desert Scheme: earth brown, middlestone, azure. These colors were US versions because Curtis painted at the factory - I've got the Dupont chips and the standard colors are very close to the Brit renditions. The interior is much more muted: I've got a photo of that somewhere back a couple of weeks. I did get an ALMM Camo Painting Mask (about $5) which were okay. But it only covers one color. That would work pretty well with most modelers - although it took time to put them on - but most people would paint the entire fuselage middlestone and mask off the dark earth. But that doesn't work with black basing, so I probably didn't save any time.
The thing looks very ragged - but that's what I want (I hope). There's lots weathering to come - salt fading, oils, filters, some chipping and probably pigments. So I hope to end up with something even more tired than a Wildcat I did a few months ago. When done, I'll post some photos, but I think you get the idea about an airplane with a year plus of service in North Africa. The Brits weren't throwing anything away, and whatever the faults of the P-40, it was a better fighter than the Hurricane and was much more rugged so it was the desert workhorse even when Trop Spits started to show up. I think the top Commonwealth aces in the theater flew Tomhawks/Kittyhawks (P-40E in the US). In any case, the plane was tough and it did last. I think Caldwell was flying a Tomahawk well into 1942. Here we go - it won't look the same when done.
Eric
camo1 by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
Camo2 by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr