allok

Great stuff!

I see I'm not too late to the party (But only just, it appears) Nice work Ian. The tweaks are worth noting too as I just aquired one of these.

Hi Mish, thanks. RNZAF planes were all painted (Silver dope), in a colour they mixed themselves, called "High Speed Silver". It was a mixture of silver dope and grey. To simulate this, I mixed Tamiya Flat Aluminium with Metallic Grey (Acrylics). They were sprayed on and then coated with Gunze Gloss to make the surface hard and shiny (For Decalling). A final coat of Gunze Flat to protect the decals and reduce the shine. Don't forget, if you use both Tamiya and Gunze on the same model, to always thin the Gunze with Tamiya thinners. These two paints don't like each other!

Thanks everyone. It's always great to get nice feedback. Hi Ian. I don't think there's much wrong with the Hasegawa kit. If I were to build another Hasegawa P-51, I would definitely replace the wheelwells and canopy. The seat also definitely needs replacing but the rest of the cockpit isn't bad. I made a few big errors when I first built it (I.e. Ruined the wheels, canopy, paint, decals, etc...): And then a few niggling little ones when I was doing the re-paint (I.e. Not enough black paint in the cockpit, stuffed up the wheels, canopy, paint decals, etc... I really just need to be more careful) I now have a replacement Canopy, which I may still install. The next Mustang I build will be the old Monogram one (with half a Kilo of resin AM) and then, hopefully, one from a different Japanese company. Once I have another in the cabinet, I might just "Donate" this one to the Museum.

They're all terrific. Well done. The trick to taking pics of models is to zoom all the way in and then move the camera back untill the kit fits in the frame. This brings the whole thing into focus and gets rid of the distortion. If you want to get really fancy; turn off the flash and use a tripod. You can also try other things like leaving the flash on but deflecting it with a piece of white paper or using multi focus points or altering the light input (Dev). Anyway, have a play with the camera and see what you think. Hope to see lots more next year.

Lookin good.

Thanks for all the positive comments folks. This is not far from the truth. I'm not a particularly fast builder anyway, but having a go at new techniques (passed on from my internet buddies) whilst still trying to get these big planes to look presentable certainly requires more that it's fair share of time.

Make that 5 for 2010. I seriously doubt I have enough time to finish another one this year. Cheers all.

This is the second go I've had with this kit. I managed to improve it but I'm still far from happy with it. Maybe if I try a different kit next time? Anyway, I'm glad to finally get it (back) into the cabinet. The Rutman Blades and HobbyDecal data were definitely the high points of this kit/re-build. Enjoy:

Nice work there Mish. Looks like you had some fun with Zero. Be careful though, the big scale stuff is very addictive.

Nice one(s)! I think the Typhoon is my favorite.

Managed 4 so far this year: 1/32-scale RNZAF P-40K-15 Warhawk 1/33-scale paper Harvard. 1/32-scale Mk.I Spitfire 1/32-scale Messerschmitt Me 109E ... and I might just squeeze another in: 1/32-scale RNZAF P-51D Mustang (TAF):

Thanks again. For various reasons, I had three WIPs going on simultaneously: Here, here and here.

Hi Folks and thanks for all the terrific comments. The Hasegawa P-40s have very few issues and are lovely kits to build. I wasn't sure how it would be received since I have posted it on a few other websites and I'm not normally comfortable with plastering the internet with my models. Since I began this project, Hasegawa have released a long-tailed P-40 (2 boxings actually- including the RNZAF markings) and Grey Matter produced some lovely resin. So I could have saved myself a little grief if I had only waited a while. The scheme was chosen after I saw a restored E on the internet and liked the look of it. It turned out, the plane I was working from was wearing a scheme from a different aircraft, so after a few tips from some more knowledgeable individuals I realised I was going to have to do a few mods before I could apply the scheme to this kit. I also had some help from the great guys over on Brad Hagens P-40 Site regarding some of the little details I would otherwise have missed. In the end it was quite nice to get it in the cabinet amongst all the other Kiwi birds. Thank you all very much for letting me show it here.

For those of you who don't make it over to the LSP site, my latest: Cheers for looking.