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I'm not gonna' lecture
anyone on the history of the P-51, I think that saying that it was the most
successful fighter of WWII about covers it.
I wanted to do a Dominican P-51D,
but due to the lack of decals in the market and my unwillingness to paint the
insignias I opted for a Tuskegee Airmen Mustang. This one is the "Duchess
Arlene" flown by the 1 st Lt. Robert Williams of the 332nd.
The Tuskegee Airmen are famous for not losing any friendly bombers to enemy fire
during their missions. They where not "Aces", they never got as many
kills as the rest of the squadrons, mainly because they only pursued enemies for
a sort distance and returned to their escort duties.
The Kit
The
fit is good overall. It does lack a lot of detail for a model that size, especially the cockpit and the engine, and I'm not sure if its only me but it
seems like the seat and the engine are slightly undersized for the model. The
seat is definitely inaccurate as well as the bubble canopy (it has a large bulge
at the bottom). It comes with a set of decals that give you only one option.
There
are 2 resin figures in the kit, ugly as hell if you ask me, they should have
invested that money in the kit, the control surfaces are movable, if you are
into that sort of thing, and the landing gear has springs (I don't recommend
installing those). It does not come with any visible PE's (just the ones used to
install the control surfaces).
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Construction
I
began by assembling the engine as per instructions, no big deal and no
complications here. I scratch-built the sparkplug wires, fuel injector manifold,
oil and hydraulic piping and drilled the frame that goes above the engine where
the engine cowling attaches.
After
that I moved on to the cockpit. Major work involved in here. The gun sight is
inaccurate it was re-done partially, the seatbelts were installed in the seat,
the panel was assembled and everything as per instructions. All the placards
where installed all well as the boxes and controls. All the switches were
scratch-built as well as all levers, knobs and trim wheels.
I
Assembled the control Surfaces and painted them, Did all the remaining
sub-assemblies, such as landing gear and tail wheel, gear well (extra piping was
installed in here), drop-tanks, machineguns and machinegun bay and propeller.
The
kit halves where glued (dry-fit everything first, you might have to trim the
tail wheel
so
that the tail section glues properly. The lower section of the wings was glued.
There is a major gap you are going to have to correct, where the fuselage meets
the wings in the forward section. The top sections of the wings where installed
(minor filling required), finally the horizontal stabilizers where glued. The
rest of the sub-assemblies were installed after all major painting was
completed.
Painting
and Markings.
First
thing is, and this might be obvious to experienced modelers but worth
mentioning, DO NOT follow the painting instructions of the kit. I painted the
engine gloss black and dry-brushed it with silver. All my Zinc Chromate greens
are of different shades (because different manufacturers used different kinds
and all parts where not made by the same manufacturer). For the interior
painting, I first painted everything with aluminum paint (enamel), after it had
dried for several days, I painted everything with Zinc Chromate green (enamel),
after dried for several days again I painted over that with semi-gloss black
(water-based) and after about and hour of drying I took a scribing tool and
started "scratching' my paint to reveal the Zinc Chromate and in some cases
the aluminum.
For
the outside. I Used Alclad II for the job, I first painted the whole thing with
Gloss Enamel Black (not the Alclad black base, STAY AWAY FROM THAT STUFF, IT
SUCKS!!!!) let this dry for at least 24 hours, if you can, wait more. Bare
aluminum planes shine when they are new and well maintained, and they tend to
dull as time passes, I chose to do something in between here. So here it is. I
took my freshly gloss black painted model, and proceeded to pre-shade (sort of)
all panel lines using flat white paint, by doing this I'm covering some of the
gloss black paint that Alclad likes, so when I spray Alclad over the flat white
the result will be a flat or dull Alclad finish. I first sprayed the whole model
with Alclad Chrome, and then Alclad polished Aluminum. Removed the dust residue,
and proceeded to paint the Tail, wingtips and nose with red. For the red I used
insignia red and added some yellow for the orange or more vivid look.
For
the markings, I used the stencils that came with the kit along with the Red Tail
Mustangs (Tuskegee Airmen) set by AM tech decals, which in my opinion are very
nice in quality.
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Conclusions
The
kit is of nice quality, and relatively simple to assemble, I was pleased with
the outcome considering it was my first Alclad painted model. I'm still going to
pursue my Dominican P-51 using the same kit (unless someone comes out with a
better one) but I will wait until some more after-markets come out for it,
specially the canopy and engine. Regardless of all the minor inaccuracies it in
my opinion the best 1/24 P-51 kit in the market at this point.
For questions or comments please write to Av8r1977@yahoo.com.
Hope
you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading my review.
References
www.mustangsmustangs.com
P-51
Walkaround, Squadron Signal Publications
P-51
Mustang in Color, Squadron Signal Publications
Tamiya
Model Magazine, Issue 99
Ramses
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