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P-51D + F-51D, Sweet Arlene and Korean war bird, both FINISHED


Wolwe82

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Well, it seems i dont have enough builds going on.. But i feel i need something fast to build, some nice, not too resistant kit :D Sooo, P-51D and F-51D, both from Airfix, hope you dont mind to be both in same thread.

The F-51D ll be the Airfix boxing from Korean War (the only decision ll be, rockets + bombs or rockets + drop tanks? but so far the yellow tanks - i did hear it was used for napalm? - are in lead)

The P-51D ll be "Sweet Arlene" from Kits World decals. The first idea was to make "Gunfighter" (also from Kits World decals), but the plane is post war warbird and as that, it has second seat behind the pilots seat. And i could not find any sources how it looks like there, so i ll keep this for later (i ll definitely build the Gunfighter, it has realy nice camo)

Started with cockpits. The green one is P-51D, the black is F-51D. I did read the black was painted over the original interior green in a hurry and it was peeling off quite fast and often, so i tried to do something like that, but knowing i m going just for OOB builds, i did not want to spend too much time with it. I got the quickboost seat (sadly have just one), ll use that to the F-51.

Question for the mustang fans around here - i did see some cockpit image of F-51D, with notes. And there was hose for Anti-G suit - was that for some testing purposes only, or all F-51D were using some kind of anti-G suits?

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Edited by Wolwe82
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:) hope i wont disapoint you guys as it ll be realy mostly quick build :) But, well.. i decided to upgrade a bit the wheel wells of the P-51D, i ll keep these opened. The F-51D ll have the wheel wells closed.

So some progress - first i did some rivetng on fuselage, i thought about filling the panel lines on wings, but better if i ll keep the wings as clear as possible under the future metal finish..

I also upgraded a bit the screws around cowling, because these were disapearing here and there. You can compare the upgraded screws vs the originals

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Also i had to take putty and fill the grid on nose, you cannt see any hint of it on the photos of Sweet Arlene.

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Next just shots of the wheel wells, as i said, i upgraded only the Sweet Arlene´s ones.

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Have the 112 Squadron boxing of this mould, so will be following this build closely :winkgrin:

Edited by Lightning 17
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Slight progress - seats, sticks and gunsights completed and installed. The green cockpit (future Sweet Arlene) got just the seat from kit, i added seat belts what i had in spare parts. Time for food now :)

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I really have no idea how you produce such quality, extra detailed work so quickly! That's about two or three weekends worth of work for me! Can I ask what you use to do the riveting? It looks really smart.

Kind regards,

Stix

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Thanks Stix, its realy nothing much than drybrushing and washing :) The rivet tool i m using is Rosie the Riveter by P.Dousek, i have the 0,55mm version which is recomended for both 1/72 and 1/48, but they have 3 other sizes (the number says distance betweenrivets), its realy nice tool :)

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Some progress is done. I ll need to work on the preparation phase, my building is quite a mess and the metalic finish shows that all.. so i was trying to save what i could.. :)

Here are both mustangs. The left one is F-51D, i used aluminium with few drops of silver (pure aluminium was too dark), for the P-51D (right one) i used just silver. Painted by Agama red line metalic paints (spirit based paints), i realy like it. I had some troubles with Agama paints earlier, but obviously it was by hands and probably too high pressure while airbrushing (and too many layers).

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Lovely finishes there, can't get enough of the Airfix Mustang :popcorn: ! I remember reading somewhere that Mustang wings were painted in a different colour to the rest of the airframe, and some also had their panel lines filled in, are either of these statements true, and if so, are you replicating them?

Simon

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Thanks Simon. The mustangs wings had usualy the panel lines filled but i m not going to do it here, i said it earlier :) All the airframe was painted by protective paint with aluminium or something like that, so i dont know anything about wings being painted by different paint :)

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some progress, masking, masking and masking.. i hate yellow and it hates me.. needed more paint for the few yellow tips than what i needed for rest of the paint work on both kits, including the metal paint... but, the first victory is mine - only very minor overspray by yellow! wohoo

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i found some images of the FF-943, mostly post war warbird, wearing this camo. the warbird had black stripes on bottom side of wings, ending on the top side around the MG´s. Checking the only photo of real FF-943 i could find (its from side and quite from far), there seems to be some darker area around the guns on leading edge and theres nothing what could lay shadow there. Also many more mustangs from the same flight wing had these black stripes, so i thought i ll paint it here too, at least it gives a bit more interest. I was even thinking about making this as the post war warbird, I m still not sure about it. Because i forgot to maskt he wheel wells, i ll need to repaint these later anyway, so i ll decide if i ll go for steel/aluminium (as original) or green (as warbird).

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Hi Wolwe, thank you for the info on the riveting tool. Must try and get one!

Beautiful, swift progress as always! Looking excellent!

Kind regards,

Stix

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Thanks Bob for the info confirming what Simon said. Honestly this is first time i did hear it, so i did not think about it before. But these are ment to be quick oob builds anyway, so on some future mustangs, i ll think about the fuselage vs wings paint :)

and thanks Blastvader and Stix :) the riveting tool is realy nice. There are more good tools on the market, but some are making little lines instead of dots, some are too fragile.. this one is realy great :)

Some progress - decals are set. The F-51D had problem with the sharkmouth - not only the curves of the nose did not allow to settle it down perfectly (i had to do some cuts to allow the decals to copy the curves) but also, when i was setting the mouth following photos of real plane, there was like 4mm gap between both parts + not covered the part under propeler, infront of the hole there. So i had to mix some red and yellow to get the right red tone and just painted the not covered areas, hope the paint ll fit good once it dries ..

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Thanks guys. Its totaly the fastest build (s) i ever did :) Honestly the quality of the work (mainly during the building times) suffered a bit because of the speed.. but well, i just wanted to paint something again! :)

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So Sweet arlene got stone grey wash on top (i was trying medium brown on bottom, but it does not look so good on the silver surface, probably some brownish sienna mix or so would work better, but i just tried the stone grey on the top, because i see ammo has set for eathering NMF planes and there is dark grey as one of the washes, so i thought i ll give a try to similar shade :) ).

Finished with microscale matt varnish. Tomorrow i ll add the propeller, gear, column behind cockpit and very little weathering touches and she ll be finished. The F-51D i want to make a bit more dirty, i ll try to do weathering with oils on her, but it ll take few evenings.

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I think you are totaly overeacting stix :))) Anyway, here is progress from today i had few hours before i had to go to work.

First i think its quite interesting, how such an easy technique like drybrushing can improve the look of the small parts. Now, i know its not exactly realistic look(mainly because i went a bit mad with the drybrushing on purpose), but for such a small scales it realy highlights the details nicely.
On the left side after drybrushing, right side without drybrushing.

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And all the little parts are finished and weathered. Later tonight i ll just put it all together, add some dust lightly around the airframe and it ll be done. The exhausts are just placeholders, before i get quickboosts. These are from the hasegawa B, i ll do some weathering on them and if it ll look good, i might keep these and savethe quickboosts for another kit. I would need to cut out the deck around the pipes though, to fit it in now.

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