MeneMene

The fuselage halves were a bit tight, and it took some fiddling to get the cockpit assembly inserted from below on the wings. Here is are the two halves glued together after some test fitting. I then mounted the wings. The rear cockpit bulkhead was slightly crooked, until I discovered that some of the cockpit wiring I added to the walls was just barely pressing against the cockpit structure and warping things. Carefully trimming it off fixed the problem. Had some small cracks/gaps to fix along the upper cowling, but nothing too bad A similar area was the bottom of the nose, and the putty is now drying. I will also have to fix the small step behind the identification light behind the radiator. Apart from these small seam issues the kit has gone together beautifully The aircraft's landing lights have this distinctive pattern over the face- does anyone know of aftermarket to represent these? I see now after I have closed up the wings that Arma offer the option to purchase a 3D print file, but the wings are now closed up and it's too late to mount them. It seems like it would be a great candidate for a photoetch piece.

I've begun the paintwork with the natural metal section around the engines. Initial effort here is two shades of Mr Super Metallic titanium. I'm going to sit on it for a few days, look at reference pictures, and come back to try to give it more detail and a heat-stained look without going completely overboard.

Cockpit sidewalls painted, weathered, and installed without difficulty And here is the cockpit base. I used the standard American radio sets that came with the kit, seem to be accurate from my research. The cargo rack will cover portions of the kit in the back so I didn't go too heavy in terms of adding custom wiring. The fuselage halves then went together without issue. No major gaps per se, but as this is will be a NMF aircraft I've used putty along all the joins which are seamless in the real aircraft, using either Tamiya Putty or black CA depending on the area/rescribing needs. Next up, I turn my attention to the convoluted nest of wires and hydraulic lines that is the P-51 wheel well. I know the colors of these is a bit of a can of worms... I'm sure there are exceptions, but from what I've gathered most of the later Mustangs (such as this D-20) had their wheel wells in overall yellow zinc chromate, whereas earlier aircraft could have a patchwork arrangement of YZC on the spars/stringers and natural metal on the fuselage skin and other areas. I haven't found a single picture that shows this area of a Swedish Mustang clearly, and the only museum examples I know of spent a long time in subsequent air forces like Israel's and likely got repainted at some point. Unless anyone has any better guidance I will go with overall YZC for the interiors and silver/natural metal for the door interiors.

Thank you, the funky orange exhausts are one of the reasons I picked this scheme, I'll see what I can do when the build gets to that stage After some degree of fiddling and test fitting, I got the cockpit frame assembled and installed on top of the wing

Thank you for the kind words. I am very guilty as charged in terms of frequently getting interesting/cool looking aftermarket additions that may or may not be seen at the end of the day or necessary. But looking at the demo pictures of the mini craft wheel well, cockpit, etc, I really don't see how they are needed for this kit. It's that good. There are a handful of exceptions; One area I forgot to mention is that I did replace the seat, which was a bit clunky, it's a Brassin 3D printed replacement. And some of the details on the side walls (map case, storage pouch) are quite soft but replacing them would be a bit of a pain to carefully sand away. I did end up adding some wiring around the electrical components, and scratchbuilt a very simple and crude black rectangular piece so serve as the later radio control unit, as this is a late war hurricane and the piece that Arma provides is only suitable for an early aircraft. But all told, the sidewalls won't be incredibly visible owing to how the fuselage curves around it so I didn't go too crazy.

Thanks! That's a great idea, I will likely end up doing something like this with a rectangular piece of plastic stock for the shelf and epoxy putty shaped into the loose canvas bag.

Hello everyone- This kit has been done several times here, not sure what my humble contribution will add, but anyone is welcome to come along on the journey. From what I've heard this kit goes together very nicely and will be a nice, hassle-free build vs some of the more complex projects I have going on. Let's see if that's the case. I've accumulated some aftermarket parts such as a Quinta interior set, Master brass gun barrels, and resin exhausts and wheels. I will be doing the black night intruder scheme, JX-E In a refreshing change of pace from many kits, construction began with the main wheel well. I took some time to add the pneumatic hoses at the front of the bay, represented by lead wire. Here is the assembled and painted wheel well Next up I prepared and painted the various cockpit parts, spruced up with the 3D Quinta decals. I only have made some minor alterations, such as opening the holes in the trim wheel and adding the associated chain. I especially like how the seat belts came out, I feel that the 3D decals are a great medium to represent these in general. Thanks for looking- this kit has been fun so far, a nice reminder that not every build needs to be stuffed full of complex resin subassemblies and hours of scratchbuilding.

Perfect! Thank you! Not a Swedish aircraft but the shelf looks identical from what I can tell. The Swedish-language book I have says it was a storage shelf, and in various pictures you can see it sometimes is full of stuff and sometimes (as in this photo) is empty. Either way, time to learn how to scratch-build loose fabric, haven't done that since I tried building some tanks a long long time ago. Initial work on the floor. Chipping might be a bit overdone, I will set it aside for a day or two and come back with fresh eyes to figure out a plan.

Hello everyone- A few years ago I set about working on the then-new Eduard and Airfix Mustangs as a side-by-side build. The Eduard one turned out great, but as time went on I became less enthused with the Airfix kit and ended up scrapping it. However I did keep the decals, and so I now am coming back to the project by building the Eduard P-51D in the Swedish variant, armed with some new information I picked up along the way. To review, this is the specific aircraft I'm going to be doing, a P-51D-20-NA with F16. Initial work has started with preparing the cockpit pieces, as usual. Not very exciting, but I'm making this post early to clarify some research questions if anybody has any answers. For the radios, this maintenance diagram suggests that the J26 used the standard American setup and no modifications will be necessary. However, the vast majority of J26 pictures I've been able to find show that the Swede's field modified this area to include a small cargo shelf. You can see it in the fuzzy reference photo of my intended aircraft above, so I will need to scratch build it. Here are some photos that show it clearer but I would love some better close-up pictures if anybody knows where to find them. Based on these images, it looks like it was secured to the sliding portion of the canopy, so I have some time to figure this out and don't need to have it sorted before closing the fuselage. But any guidance would be helpful. So far, I'm imagining a piece of rectangular plastic sheet, with one end secured at the rear of the canopy frame and the front end mounted to the top of the support bow, with either a central support strut in the middle or one on each side, it's hard to tell from the photos.

I added the brass fuel piping from the fuel tanks using some sliding rod And the build was finished by the addition of the mirror to the front canopy And here are some shots of the finished build.

After a few months hiatus, some work has resumed. Additional small photoetch details such as the formation lights The landing gear is now painted and installed. There are still some details to add such as the taxi/landing lights and some electrical and hydraulic wiring, but the model is now standing on it's own legs and just about ready for paint.

Thank you all! I took the time to add the gunsight between all the engine work The engine cowling fit very nicely over the whole aftermarket assembly Next, I assembled and painted the drop tanks. Most reference photos I have show these very scuffed and beat up. Next comes the propeller and the drop tanks were mounted on their racks One bit of reference/research I need help with- does anyone have any images or guidance for how the fuel plumbing worked for the drop tanks? This aftermarket set suggests there was some sort of copper/brass pipe that went from the fuel tank to the wing, but I can't find any clear photographs. The Eduard kit just has the two sway braces, so something else will need to be added. I really love the way Eduard has handled the various navigation lights- tiny clear parts that come with long cylindrical mounting pegs to firmly locate them in the right place

The particular aircraft I'm doing had the zero length rocket stubs under the wings, but in no photographs could I find evidence of rockets being carried. The kit supplies these, but only as part of the weapons. So first step was to break out the saw and remove the stubs. These were then inserted into the mounting plates on the underside of the wing. Next up, I buckled up to tackle the exhaust staining. Most examples of two small triangular sections behind this plate that were clear of exhaust, due to the aerodynamics around the step of the plate. To represent this, I added some very tiny pieces of cut tamiya tape before painting. And the end result; fairly happy with how it turned out. Maybe the boundary could be a harder/more distinct but I'll take it. There are some exhaust sites on the underside, but most of the photos show this to have much less staining, something to do with the airflow in all likelyhood. So apart from the cut channels I just did some subtle staining on the lower area. That difficult task accomplished, I mounted the resin exhaust collection and followed it by mounting the engine in front.

Here is the current status of the paintwork after the various touchups and some initial weathering The paint on the underside is much less advanced, but I did make some progress by installing the very fiddly landing gear. Next focus will be to continue the weathering on the upper surfaces including the relatively complex/distinctive exhaust stain pattern seen on the FM-2

Thanks! I was surprised by the paint reaction as well, I've been using the same clear coat for a while and this was the first time I had anything resembling an issue. It's been fixed now, I'm just waiting on a chance to take some better pictures of the finished paintwork before giving some updates, GSB is such a difficult color to correctly photograph Thanks