Hi gents
I've done a few kits for every year on this GB. However, in January Finescale lost track of my account. For some reason known only to Zeus, this GB and British Army reappeared. Hope this will remain the case.
Originally I had plans for a Russian, British and American kit for the year - but considering the schedule change, I'm going to try to finish the Meng 1/48 P-51D Mustang. It'll have 8th AF colors so you can certainly figure 1945.
kit by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
This is an odd kit and it has its own drummer. In theory it's made to be assembled without glue - hence tight fight and big attachment points. Think Bandai here - this is not a simple kit at all - it has a part count over 100 - twice what the classic Tamiya P-51D has. So far the fit on the kit has been very impressive - it's tight and you have to get used to wiggling major pieces into place - but they get there. (You can see the completed fuselage in the kit pic above.)
Naturally I did the cockpit first. I have to fess up - I've never sweated cockpits. I know you're supposed to, but I don't build for the camera and I've never built an airplane that had much cockpit easily visible. But as you can see I've got one done - there's a lot of detail on the inside. (BTW - my Interior Green is almost a perfect match for AK Real Colors interior green. Figure yellow oxide, a bit of carbon black, some permanent green and a tad of white. All done in Golden High Flow - my standard paint.) The wash is done with Iwata Com.Art transparent smoke. I like Com.Art for interiors - the colors amplify detail adequately (most of which you can't see) and it leaves a nice grime that would be inside any well used fighter.
parts by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
cockpit by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
One thing that's attractive is that the modular construction is going to leave me with no major seams - just the thing for natural metal finish. As I'm pretty much confined to using non-solvent paints I'll be using Vallejo's newish Metal Color acrylics. It won't match K-Color or the best of the lacquers, but the Vallejo line is very good. Aside from that I don't want a super shine - we've got a lot of color footage of WWII P-51s & P47s in NMF and it's it's shinny but very soiled. (I've seen some museum planes that shine like glass, but that's not wartime.) So I'm hoping that the Vallejo will do just fine.
This kit - unfortunately like every P-51 kit I know of - has a sting in the tail. The P-51 was famous for it's "laminar flow" wing. (Engineers argue still about how much "laminar effect" was gained by the Mustang wing.) The idea was to have a very even wing surface. This means that all of the top wing (minus control surfaces) and most of the bottom was sprayed with a putty over a primer and then spray painted silver. This means that the panel lines are very indistinct and rivets shouldn't be there at all. The problem is that the Meng kit is new and it's got rivets galore which complicates the process greatly. I was messing around with putty but because it appears that the panel lines don't have to be eliminated, I've decided to carefully sand the rivets off - hope we can get things smooth. Eventually I will be putting on Duplicolor black lacquer primer which is "sandable" and "fillable" so I think things will work. The big question is why hasn't anyone made their P-51 kit to fit reality. Meng, Airfix and Eduard all have new P-51 kits and every one comes with fine surface detail on the wings - just what you don't want. There were no doubt some 51s that didn't get the treatment, but in WWII the number would have been very small - the putty was put on at the factory. One of the makers could have at least put in two sets of wings - one with, one without rivets. It's not like Eduard or Meng are budget brands.
p-51wings by Eric Bergerud, on Flickr
More later.
Eric