China-Burma-India Theater GB 2006-2007

bobbaily wrote:

Very nice work Scott.  Looking forward to seeing the finished plane.

Me too, and thanks Bob. 

Looks very good Scott.  An alternative to Silly Putty, that I prefer for this type of masking, is Blu-Tac or Handi-Tac.

Regards,  Rick

I meant to post these the other day.   

I sprayed the green using a combination of paper masks for the wings and tail surfaces (enlarged copies of the kit instructions paint diagram to scale, cut out the masks and used Tamiya tape to secure them) and silly putty for the complex curves on the fuselage.  I'm in the process of fixing just a tiny bit of overspray in 2 spots (just need to lightly spray some of the brown on those areas, really close in with low air pressure) and fix a spot on the lower left end of the tail where I accidently sprayed green where it should be brown.  Oh, and I need to add the round green circle on the left side of the aft fuselage.

This was the first time I had tried using silly putty as a masking material and I must say it worked pretty well once I figured out the trick to handling it propertly.  I rolled it into long thin strips about the size of thick spaghetti noodles and then laid them out along the areas outlining the sections that needed to stay brown.  I then sprayed very close to the surface barely pulling back on the trigger so as to control as best I could where the green was going on the surface.  It worked nicely, with just two small areas where there is just a little bit of overspray.  Next time I should be able to use the silly putty trick with no issues.... another new trick to add to my skill set. 

espins1 wrote:

rjkplasticmod wrote: Don't feel bad about the tail planes Scott, I've done the same thing a couple of times & it's irritating but an easy fix. Regards,  Rick aye, that's the beauty of using Acrylics.... Windex, lots and lots of Windex.

rjkplasticmod wrote:

Don't feel bad about the tail planes Scott, I've done the same thing a couple of times & it's irritating but an easy fix. Regards,  Rick

aye, that's the beauty of using Acrylics.... Windex, lots and lots of Windex. 

Don't feel bad about the tail planes Scott, I've done the same thing a couple of times & it's irritating but an easy fix.

Regards,  Rick

Thanks for the birthday wishes for my daughter.  She's going to take her drivers test next week to get her drivers license. 

Well, I ran into a minor snag on the P-40 which I discovered while masking to spray the green camo pattern over the brown.  I tried something different this time and decided to spray the tail plane parts detached from the fuselage to make masking on those nasty complex curves of the fuselage and rudder a little easier.  Well....... I guess I wasn't paying attention when I painted the gray on the bottom and the brown on top as I have both tail plane surfaces keyed such that they'd both go on the right side.  Doh!  No worries, I'll just soak the left one in some windex and re-spray the gray and brown, this time making sure it's keyed to go on the left. 

Just a few minor details to wrap up, just need to fix the tailplane paint snafu, seal it up, decal, seal, weather and flatcoat.  Each job should take a day so as to allow drying between jobs.  So lets see..... if all goes well I should have this done no later than next Friday. 

Again, thanks for you patience and sorry about being late.  At least my GB plate is starting to get whittled down a bit... 

Happy birthday to your daughter.

I can't wait until I turn 17 so I can get my driver's license... 3 more months... yup, I'm still a young un.

In more progress, High school tennis started today so that means no time to do anything whatsoever, except complain about how they make us play outside when it's 25 degrees and snowing... 

I look forward to trying out some new techniques on this plane, like salt chipping.

I took a little break from model building this weekend.  My daughter turned 16 so we did a lot of fun family stuff and I spent most of the weekend hanging out with her. 

I'm going to finish up the camo tonight.  I've been looking at photos and profiles of the P-40E in service with the Flying Tigers (23rd Fighter group) after the AVG was disbanded and I'm trying to determine if the camo was hard edged (i.e. painted with a template) or semi-hard/soft edged.  It's hard to tell from some of the photographs, and the profiles seem to show it both ways.  I always hesitate to use a profile as "gospel" as it's someone else's interpretation of how it looked.  If it's semi soft edged, I may try to free hand spray the green. 

Anyone have any info that might be helpful regarding the hard/soft edge camo for a P-40E, specifically Ed Rector's with the 23rd Fighter Group? 

I'm not gonna give anyone a hard time for not finishing.

In progress news cockpit painting is pretty much finished. It just needs a wash and a dry brush.

The AM kit is quite good but it seems to have a few quirks.  

Looks good Scott.

Regards,  Rick

Scott-very nice work.  Making me want to pull my Hase P-40 out of the stash.

Tanky-please put me down as a DNF.  The Acadmey kit just has enough little things bugging me that I don't want to fininsh it at the moment.  The addition of the resin interior, although very detailed, didn't help matters.
thanks

I managed to get some time to mask and spray the Flat Earth top coat.  I tried to do some very subtle post shading to break up the monotony of the brown a bit as the sun in China and Burma was pretty brutal.  I stuck with philosophy it's better to be too subtle than too bold with it, which is fine as I'm trying to depict a recently arrived P-40E that hadn't been beat up yet.  The pictures don't quite show the variations as they appear in person, but you get the idea.

Tomorrow I hope to mask for the green, which based on past experience will take at least an hour or two to pull off.  Once the green is done it will be a fast ride to the finish line. 

Oh, and I finished Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and the American Volunteer Group by Daniel Ford today.  It was an excellent read in my opinion.  I don't think the book was nearly as controversial as some people seemed to make it, and I believe Ford wasn't trying to be disrespectful in any way.  Victory claims are always inflated, most of the time unintentially as it's difficult in the heat of battle to be able to pay attention the the plane you just shot at while still engaged in combat.  It's easy to glance back over your shoulder and see a flaming plane going down and assume it's the one you just shot at, when it could have been one that was flamed by someone else.  That happened all the time, Axis and Allies alike.  In fact he proved that the Japanese victory claims against the Flying Tigers were horrifically over inflated.... with claims totalling several times over the actual total number of AVG aircraft that were ever even in the theater!    I think he very tastefully tried to portray the truth on both sides and don't feel that he in any way was trying to discredit or debunk the image of the Flying Tigers.  I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in the subject.  

Scott, I painted the air frame & clear parts separately & then added the clear parts as one of the last steps.  They fit well enough to get away with it, although on some kits,that require some filling to blend in the clear parts,  you have to add & mask the clear parts before painting.   Many modelers always put the clear parts on before painting, but I don't like leaving masking on that long.

Regards,  Rick

Question for you Rick. 

When you built your Hasegawa P-40E's did you spray your topcoats with the canopy attached or did you do them seperately so that your camo airbrush job included those rear window recesses? 

Just curious how you handled that as I'm debating whether to just brush paint the camo in the rear window area first then mask and attach the canopy parts to spray the plane.

Looking forward to some pics Scott .

Regards,  Rick

Tankmaster7 wrote:

A guy in my club brought in the hase P-40E. Man that thing has a detailed cockpit straight OOB.

I agree, the cockpit is very nice and the photo etch bits and seat belts really take it up a notch. 

Overall I'm pleased with my seam work, first time I every really did anything about seams.  I need to rescribe a couple of very small panel line sections so I'm going to go by the hobby store today and see if they have anything that might help with that.

Rick, thanks again for the heads up on the rivets behind the back windows.  They were fairly prominent so I just sanded them down a bit. 

rjkplasticmod wrote:

Glad to help Scott.  Of course you're assuming I'm giving good info . Regards,  Rick

And you know what happens when we assume..... tee hee 

The seam work is FINALLY finished.... whew!  It was worth it though.  This is the first time I've really worried about seams and wanted to actually do something about them.  Good learning experience and one you get the hang of the ins and outs of seam fixing it's really not that hard.  Just requires some patience, delicate handling and elbow grease. 

I put the final primer coat on so I'll let it cure overnight.  At the rate I'm going I'll have this P-40 finished sometime next week, so I hope it's ok that I slide in just a little past the deadline.    I could have finished this by the deadline if I hadn't messed with the seams, but I really wanted to do a good job on this one. 

Glad to help Scott.  Of course you're assuming I'm giving good info .

Regards,  Rick

The rear windows were removeable & usually added after painting.  While I've seen pics showing that area in Interior Green or Green Zinc Chromate, most seem to have been painted in the top side camo color, which is how I do mine.

Neutral Gray is FS36173, which is darker than your reference.  However, the AVG P-40's were factory painted with Aircraft Gray undersides, which is a much lighter shade of Gray.  I don't use Tamiya paints, but the Sky Gray looks like a pretty good match.

Regards,  Rick

rjkplasticmod wrote:

Scott, I agree with your suggestions marked on the assembly instructions.  I've built 3 of these kits.  The first, I followed Hasegawas' instructions, but the last two I did as you suggest.  I would add that it's best to sand down the rivets in the inserts D1 & D2 in order to get the rear windows to fit flush. Regards,  Rick

Good to know as I hadn't dry fitted those yet.  Thanks Rick for saving me some serious trouble down the road!! 

Couple questions for you Rick.  The directions call for the area behind the inserts D1 and D2 to be painted the interior green color.  Almost every photo I've come across of Flying Tiger P-40's has that area painted in camo like the rest of the fuselage.  What did you do with yours?

Also, I'm having a tough time matching up the underside color with the Tamiya Acrylic paint range.  The instructions call for "Neutral Gray" however Tamiya's neutral gray color is way too dark.  I was thinking of going with XF19 "Sky Gray"... what do you think?  Tamiya's sky gray looks like this http://www.colorserver.net/showcolor.asp?fs=36473