Search the Community

Hi folks! Just finished this one up last week, it's been a productive year thus far. I had never done a plane with full invasion stripes so I figured I would give it a go. The Tamiya kit still holds up well, but I'm looking forward to a B variant from Eduard. P-51B Mustang "Impatient Virgin?" 376th FS 361st FG Lt. Victor E. Bocquin Bottisham UK, September 1944 Ultracast seat Ultracast wheels Ultracast flaps Eduard Zoom PE Riveted fuselage Hollowed kit exhaust and gun barrels Squadron vac canopy KitsWorld decals Custom insignia masks Anyways, on to the pics! Thanks for looking!

I think I have already hinted in my P-38F build for the 453rd Museum at Old Buckenham that more than one aircraft might be involved.... and that I am deliberately venturing outside my comfort zone in some areas. Welcome to builds 2 & 3. This will continue to be 1/48, but instead of P-38 I will be moving to the P-51 Mustang, an aircraft of which my knowledge is superficial at best. And this will be my debut NMF... In particular, this will be a tribute to a specific individual, Captain Shelton Monroe, who flew both P-51Bs and P-51Ds with 334th Fighter Squadron in 1944-45. He later flew Mustangs again in the Korean War, where sadly he was to lose his life. This is the gentleman in question: it is sobering to learn that he was born 3 days short of 44 years before me. The accidents of timing. ...and again, photographed in 44-63670, his P-51D after he left the 334th FS. The P51B will be this aircraft, BuNo 37178, which was assigned to Capt Monroe (but later shot down with a different pilot). I need to get a decent quality scan of that panther marking, so I can attempt some home-baked transfer goodness... The kit? Tamiya’s P-51B. This is over 20 years old, and it is fascinating to see the extent to which even Tamiya have progressed in that time; it is a far simpler kit than modern offerings. By all accounts the basic shape is decent, but it will benefit from a bit of after-market bling-itude - notably an Aires cockpit (correcting the incorrect cockpit floor and adding some detail). The cockpit is en route from Lowestoft as we speak. I’ll also be using an Aires wheel well, and elevators, plus a Yahu instrument panel and some Montex masks for that canopy (& probably the markings too). I’ve read at least one build that says the airscrew could be improved, too - more research required on that one. In comparison with a modern kit of equivalent quality - it is still a Tamiya kit, when all is said and done - it is almost laughably simple. 2 runners plus the clear parts: The second kit is at the opposite end of the modernity / complexity continuum - the Eduard P-51D... specifically the original “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” boxing released to coincide with the US IPMS 2019 show... which was held in Chattanooga. Why that boxing? Because one of the 6 schemes therein is from Shelton Monroe’s squadron, which will simplify the markings somewhat... Mine will be this aircraft, BuNo 415312, which Monroe is known to have crash-landed in Belgium in December 1944. I look forward to lots of people complaining that the invasion stripes have been painted wrong... but at least all I need to find is an N (though I will almost certainly try to paint the markings anyway). This kit has an almost bewildering number of options, not to mention a LOT of parts that are not used. 3 canopies that look identical to the naked eye, for instance... Also, it being Eduard, there’s a small but beautifully done PE fret for the cockpit, plus masks - I very much doubt this will need any after-market enhancement. As you can see, I have already made a small start with some Alclad black primer and a little of @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies’s “Teak” to act as the preliminary coat for some “wood”. In their different ways and different eras, both of these look as though they’ll be a lot of fun to build. I plan to build them in parallel - as soon as the Aires cockpit arrives I’ll catch the B up with the D. My original thought for the NMF was Alclad, but I have been so impressed with the Tamiya Lacquer LP-11 Silver in the P-38F build that I suspect that will become involved as well. Heart attacks are never a good thing... but the Cardiac Rehab Team are almost ordering me to do some modelling. After several months where I’ve been exclusively lurking in the Maritime section, now you have 3 of me! More soon Crisp

Yet more from what I laughingly call "my portfolio" or even more pretentiously "mes oeuvres" are these two American aircraft in Olive Drab. Unfortunately in the clean up Fairy liquid seems to have washed away some of the OD enamel!!!!!!! and left dusty lumps that won't come off. First up is Don Gentile's Shangri-La from the HobbyBoss easy kit. Well I needed something easy for one of our one-day build days. Actually its not a bad kit and assembled nicely and quickly. The only point of interest is the spinner colour - I took along an Osprey book about Mustangs (yes, researching during the 7.5hour available build time) and found the spinner was white on the cover painting and definitely not white in a photo inside. As you will see I hadn't realised how dark "Neutral Gray" is supposed to be when I built this. The second plane is a Hasegawa Thunderbolt. I can only say it was alright. Not sure if it was the kit or I just didn't get really into it, this kit doesn't have the excuse of a one-day build. The stiff, fragile decals didn't go down well and seem to have been adversely affected by the clean-up even though all my planes get Kleared and matt varnished. The decals have also now decided to silver after several years of being fine! Cheers Will

On the front of the latest Flypast mag, there's a feature on the restored P-51B Impatient Virgin. I'm after a decal set or two to create a couple of aircraft that flew from Bottisham & the 361st and this aircraft cought my eye. I bet a few other modellers have been thinking the same thing! Does any one know where I can get the decals individual to this aircraft E9-R 42-106638? I do have a couple of sheets for the national markings & codes. Were they ever released with a kit? I am planning on building the original airframe, not the recently restored version. Mart