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Tamiya 1/32 - RF-51D Korean War


Wolwe82

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 Hey guys, pretty long long time since i was making wip build here on BM - finaly i might have a bit more time, so i m happy to be back :) A lot of things changed, most of it for good :) I have got married this summer, so you can imagine, siting by the work bench for whole evening is not anymore an option ;)

 

 Anyway, when i saw this GB i was thinking about building the Tamiya 1/72  or 1/48 kit.. Then Meng and Airfix announced new 1/48s and i know Eduard is going to release their 1/48 D in not so far future too.. sooo.. i was thinking what to do.. then saw this kit in a sale.. well, long storry short, here i m with the amazing Tamiya 1/32 Mustang :)

 

 And i would like to begin with a little bit of begging :) If anyone has some good references for Korean Mustangs, mainly about the 45th TRS "Polka dot squadron" and their RF-51D, it would be great! I would need everything - from cockpit colour scheme, wheel wells colours, camouflage details.. If there are some aftermarket decals/masks and such.. :) All i know from my previous F-51D build is, the Korean mustangs had usualy cockpits repainted in black, wheel wells along with whole airframe (so not only wings but fuselage too) repainted by silver laquer. But that is quite all i know :(

 

 Another option could be some pacific theatre Mustang (as there are decals for it :) ) or some OD top side mustang, if i got some decals.. :)

 

 Well, thats it for now, i have a bit of free time so hurry up ! :)

 

Edited by Wolwe82
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Thanks Steve, cheers :)  I thought i ll go just OOB with it, but you know me.. so i m working on the engine now, ll add some plumbing and so.. so far the parts goes together like charm, almost no cleaning needed, the kit is SO WELL engineered...

 Seems the worst problem ll be what camo to chose.. :)))

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 Hi Stix, thanks, i m also happy to be back by the work bench and to be back here as well :)  And i m realy sorry i could not take part in your Vignette GB, i did not have the time i hoped i would have :(

 

 For this build, i started with the engine, but the first two weeks i wont have much time bcs of night shifts, so here is just slow progress - i was too lazy to take my camera so just quick shot by phone :) I have added a bit of details here and there, i did not add much of the details to the bottom area of the engine as you wont see much of it once the engine ll be put into the rack. 

 

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 I m still deciding what camo should i use, i dont feel for overall NMF, i m still more and more thinking about some OD/NG camo or at least OD top over NMF undersides. Or RAF Mk.IV Mustang and lately maybe even IDF Mustang.. Chosing camo is the most difficult thing in every build for me :) 

 

Btw, if anyone had some nice pic showing the plumbing and wires between engine and the nose firewall, it would be great! :) Thanks 

 

 

 

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11 hours ago, Wolwe82 said:

Hey again guys, i m so sorry, last two weeks i had night shifts but at wednesday i ll continue on painting the engine :) 

No need to appologise, such is life, we must work to survive and make the money required for buying models ;) 

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Hi Wolwe. Well the engine was looking excellent on the 13th November and, like the others, I'm looking forward to seeing more progress when you get chance.

Kind regards,

Stix

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Welcome aboard...and back!

 

What a nice model to come back with, it'll be great to follow this build. I love the work on the engine, the kit detail is so nice a crisp, much better than the kit detail one my ZM Ta-152's engine! Plus the extra work you've done is great!

 

For me if you want to do something a bit different then the IDF Mustang is the way to go.

 

Good luck with the build will be following with interest.

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Hey guys, i m here with another quick update - i thought it would go a bit faster, but i just could not leave the cockpit only OOB. As this is my first large scale plane model, i still need to fight the conflict within myself - one part of me wants to add as much detail as possible, the other part of me knows i still need to practice a lot more to be able to make realy great details (+ i m a bit rusty atm). So, here is the job done so far on cockpit side walls, seat (dinghy is homemade, could have go better but it was my first try at this technique :) ) and also i have added details on the fuselage tank, all scratchbuild - i did not want to spend hundreds for aftermarket :)

 

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Thanks guys, cheers :) 

 

John, i know about the aftermarket stuff for this kit, but there are two problems - the barracuda stuff is very hard to get here (very few eshops offers it here, but all of them order it just after your order so it would take  month or even more to get it :( ) and ordering directly from barracuda means i have to pay extra taxes (as it is out of EU) :( and also, the kit itself is rather expensive for me, so spending hundreds of euro/thousands of crowns to it is no option for me (unless i want my wife to kick me ouot of the house :D ) . So the only aftermarket i bought was Eduards Brassin wheels and YAHU instruction panel - these looks awesome on lower scales, but sadly, as soon as i got mine by post i noticed, in 1/32 the panel is kinda flat. Sill it is very nicely painted so i ll probably add some raised details to it rather than paint the kit one. 

 

 Last aftermarket item i m going to get ll be decals/masks set for marking. Though i still not decided which one - i do not want to make overall NMF plane, would prefere some OD/green top side at least, but most of the interesting planes (Frenesi for example) have the early D tail shape :( So, lets see what i can find, i m just pretty sure i do not want to use decals at this scale. Thinking about it, i might get the HGW transfers for the stencils yet but that ll be all! :D 

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  • 2 weeks later...

  Hello guys, i m sorry for the long time it took me to add new progress here :( When i started the build, i thought i ll just do this kit simply OOB.. But the longer i was thinking about it, the more i felt bad about it. The kit is amazing and looks great even OOB, but the temptation to add something here and there was soooo big... and once i decided to go for RF-51D, there was no way back... and instead of using the free time for fast building, i was browsing the web, searching for the special electronic equipement of RF-51D´s, changes in cockpit, tons of photos of Korean mustangs (tried to see how the planes looked like after the revision)..

 

  So to make the storry short, the progress is not as fast as i hoped and im now pretty sure i wont catch the deadline, i m so sorry to those who are hosting the group and to all of you here, but right now i would have to rush like hell and i think the kit does not deserve such a finish :( I would still like to finish the model as a part of this GB, even though after the deadline.

 

  Here is some progress then :) 

 

new electronic stuff - i found some shots here and there on the web and i tried to make these as accurate as possible :) 

 

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  I made following changes to the cockpit :

 

- scratched the electronic behind the seat + few instruments on the cockpit walls

- new rotating lever on the right side (for opening/closing the canopy?)

- reshaping and scratching details of the lever on right front side

- some wires here and there all around

- added details to the gunsight (the adjusting wheel, lever, wire, reshaped the pad and new details on front side)

- made new dinghy pack (the part was not in the kit, not sure why, probably the whole Z frame was missing.. ) - i m not happy with this one, should buy the HGW part :(

- seatbelts from the Eduard´s new "STEELbelts" serie

- and more new details to the sidewalls

- YAHU instrument panel - i liked the look of 1/72 and 1/48 instrument panels by YAHU, so i thought i would get one for this kit. I have to say i m not happy with it at all.. the print quality is amazing, from this point of view everything is great. But the panel is WAY WAY toooooo flat.. Sadly, at the time i got it to my hands, i had already removed the relief from the original plastic part for the IP, so i could not use the original part anymore. I also like the yellow line and the info sheets made on the YAHU panel. So i did following - the kit contained two IP (one for other version). So i took the plastic panel and removed the two biggest instruments from it, then thinned it from backside as much as possible (to get it almost paper thin) and glued these on the central area, over the painted YAHU panel. I thought about making all of the instruments this way, but the other instruments were simply too small and i could not pick them good enough to shape it correctly :(

 

 Well, enough talking, here are some shots i took at various stages of the building/weathering process :)

 

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I m now working on the engine area. I m going to add as much of the plumbing and wiring as possible :)

 

So far, i have reshaped the tank there, added new homemade "belts" strips and some details. The plumbing ll be done later as i need to add the bottom part of the firewall first, which is part of the wheel well.

 

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Thanks for watching guys, i ll add more progress as soon as possible - i hope the 2017 modelling year ll be better as in the 2016 i could finish only 2 models... It was busy year for me, a lot of things happened in my life, but lucky for me, all for good :) cheers :) 

 

Edited by Wolwe82
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The cockpit is one of the most realistic I've seen, you could be looking at a photo of a well worn Korean Mustang. I agree with you about the Yahu IPs, they are fine in 1/48 but need a little more relief in 1/32. I plan to add some etched bezels to the larger instruments on mine when I use them.

 

Cheers

 

John

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Thanks John, you are way too kind to me and i mean it seriously :) My humble skills got rusty quite quickly over the last year (only two finished models, thats not much of practicing) :( 

 

You are totaly right about the 1/32 panels, honestly next time i would use the original plastic part and used just the background from the printed panels (as a dials). Or something like that. Or do you have some kind of etched instruments? I mean, if someone was making the etched instruments in big sets (like you have decals for instruments in various scales), it would be amazing. :)

 

I ll have to learn to work with 1/32, i thought it ll be easier to make some details, but with the larger scale, you want to make even more details(which you would ignore in 1/72 or even 1/48), so you again end up doing so small details... only more than in smaller scales.. :) Seems like neverending loop :)

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