MeneMene

Not much behind extra detail the Eduard kit has behind the seat armor bulkhead can be seen once the battery/radios are in place behind it, so I'll leave it as is on the Airfix kit. I did, however, do some scratchbuilding with some wire and plastic to recreate some other missing details such as the fuel filler pipe, rear fuel gauge, and cabling. Side-by-side when painted: After the addition of the seats and their belts: Basic comparison of the cockpit sidewalls. As usual the detail on the Eduard representation is much crisper, with the framework actually being a separate piece. The mounting for the instrument panel is different in the two kits, and you need to add it earlier on the airfix kit. Here is the instrument panel with krystal klear drying on the gauges. To recap, here are views of each cockpit before it's time to close, after some washes and oil paints for weathering and the addition of the final details. Eduard first: One thing left to do is the throttle. The Eduard kit is going to represent a wartime P-51D in the autumn of 1944, with a N-9 gunsight instead of the later gyroscopic sight. As such, I need to change the throttle handle from the bicycle-grip style featured in the kit (used to set the gyro gunsight range) to a simple rounded knob found on earlier P-51's. Once that change is made we can close up the fuselage. The Airfix version, a bit more weathered as it's an aircraft after several years of service rather than brand new. As an opposite to the Eduard kit, I need to add the bicycle-grip throttle using some plastic rod, but that should be quick. Test-fitting: The Eduard fit is excellent, the only troublesome area seems to be right behind the radiator exit, but we will get to that later. The Airfix kit will need a bit more work. The fit of the parts for the fin fillet is poor, and results in a gap in the upper fuselage that will need to be filled. It also has some fit struggles in the rear fuselage between the tail wheel bay and the radiator.

Whoops

It's a different engine and cowling. Also some different cockpit details.

Preliminary work so far: I got the Eduard and Airfix cockpits to roughly the same state. First, the Eduard cockpit: Followed by Airfix: There's still lots of work to do with oils and painting some details. The Airfix kit is going to be a machine after 5 years of use whereas the Eduard kit is a wartime P-51, so I kept the weathering much lighter. The Eduard kit has much more detail behind the seat mounting, although most of it will be covered up once I install the radio and battery equipment on the rack behind it. I might try to add the bulkhead with the cutouts to the Airfix kit but don't think I'll go much beyond that. I made some progress on the seat question- the bucket seat is the Schick-Johnson seat, and the two types were interchangeable. It was more commonly used in a wooden form on the early P-51 models, but then was used occasionally in a metal form towards from P-51D-15 and on. Becuase I have a picture of the preserved Swedish P-51 with a Schick Johnson seat, and the default seat provided by Airfix is not the greatest, I will use the Eduard SJ seat on my Swedish Airfix P-51 build.

Hello everyone- After finishing the Mig, for the next project I'm doing a dual build, comparing the Airfix vs Eduard Mustangs. I got the Eduard one later and have read the general conclusion that it is superior, but let us see for ourselves. The Eduard one should have everything needed for a great built as provided inside the box. I have a photoetch set and some seat belts for the Airfix kit. I also have a set of Master P-51D brass gun barrels but am unsure if I will use them or not. This is actually the first time I've built a P-51 so I will eagerly accept the help and feedback when it comes to questions and accuracy issues I encounter during the builds. The Airfix kit will be built as a Swedish J26. The kit comes with decals for Red L of F16 based in Uppsala. The aircraft, numbered 26014 in Swedish service, was a P-51D-20-NA built with the serial number 44-72177. It was one of a group of Mustangs delivered to the Swedish Air Force at Bromma in April 1945, and was eventually sold on to the Dominican Republic in 1952. This is the plan for now; but I am in contact with a relative who flew the J26 Mustang at this time, and might switch to build his aircraft if I can get the information and resources. For the Eduard kit, I'm still deciding. All the aircraft are P-51D-5. I'm leaning towards Chattanooga Choo Choo on the box art or maybe the green-nosed Caroline, we shall see. The cockpit floors side-by-side: Eduard has some crisper detail around the control column. Comparing the seats brings me to my first research question. Both kit instructions call for the "two-part" seat. Eduard's is clearly superior. The airfix representation has a thick rim of the seat bottom, as well as built-in cushion and seat harness that I would like to replace. However, when looking at a preserved Swedish P-51D in Linkoping, I see that it has a different type of seat, a "bucket seat" with prominent rivets: As luck would have it, the Eduard kit supplies this type of seat as an un-used extra, and with minor work it will fit well to the airfix cockpit. So for my first question to any lurking Mustang experts, which seat type should I use in the Swedish example? The preserved aircraft is also a P-51D-20 from the same delivery, so in the absence of conflicting evidence I guess I can use the Eduard bucket seat? I'd appreciate any help in the matter. The Eduard seat armor has much more detail in the back, I'll wait to do some test fitting before deciding how much I want to replicate on the Airfix kit depending on how much will be visible. Now, the next research area I'm trying to figure out is gunsights. Did the J26 delivered to Sweden have the K-14 gunsight? The aircraft was delivered new to the USAAF in January 1945, and I think the K-14 was in widespread use by then. Looking at photographs of Swedish Mustangs, I can see two types of gunsight being used: I believe this is a standard N-9 reflector sight, not a K-14: And I've also found two images with gunsights that I can't identify. The bases look sort of like a K-14, and there are two panes of glass as part of the sight, but it's surrounded by a metal structure with circular cutouts. Maybe this is a Swedish-derived sight instead? Does anyone have an idea of what these are or what kind of sight to install into a J26 Mustang? Between the parts provided in the kit and some aftermarket I should be able to easily install a K-14 or a N-9, but I still don't know what the unknown type of sight is, and it might be harder to scratchbuild should I need it. Thanks for reading, and again I appreciate any help/feedback with my initial research questions.

Next I added a panel line wash and some airbrushwork to create some stains and paint variation. No in-progress pics of that process but I do have some of the end result. I build and installed the Master brass gun barrels, trying my best to carefully align them. The small VHF(?) antenna was very crude in the kit, with a indistinct profile. So I instead just cut my own out of plastic card: I also installed the antenna mast, the antenna wire, and then replaced the ejection seat after it had fallen out earlier, this time firmly gluing it in place Some fuel stains around the drop tank fill points Here are the bren-gun photoetch wheel chocks before paint And installed. Success! After bending them down a bit they were able to provide the leverage to keep the nose pushed forward. Canopy installed, pitot tube painted Gun camera lens filled in with PVA And here is the end result. I need to set up the photo booth to get some final pics of this and the Stuka, but here are some temporary ones. Thanks everyone for all the help and encouragement on a difficult build! I think it turned out OK in the end.

Sorry, missed this. I'm pretty sure it's Alclad Magnesium plus a black Tamiya panel line wash.

I installed the rest of the landing gear covers, added a linkage strut to the outer ones using some plastic rod. The fork-like linkage between the main strut and the landing gear aren't the most realistic but I'm starting to run out of steam. I also added the pneumatic brake lines. Gloss coat on Decals on

So I've settled on using some wheel chocks to try to stop the plane from tipping backwards. In the meantime, I filled the holes I made in an attempt to fill the nose area with more weight: Here is the current progress after most of the painting is finished. The decals I have call for blue lettering for the unit/aircraft number, but most of my references say red, so I made a set of stencils and went with that instead: For the drop tanks, I've built and painted them with an aluminum finish. I wouldn't think they would come pre-painted as all the home USSR Migs would be silver at this time. They haven't been attached yet, so if this is incorrect and they should be camouflaged then I am happy to change it. The decals also come with a fairly extensive set of maintenance stencils. Would I be correct in assuming that most of these would have been repainted when the aircraft received field camouflage? What about the black wing walkways? Should I paint those on top of the camouflage or leave them off? Pictures of these aircraft are very rare so lots of it has to be guesswork.

I think I have it! I'll add wheel chocks, glueing them to the back of the main wheels to prevent them tipping backwards. These were the ones I was thinking of getting: https://www.scalemates.com/kits/brengun-brl48034-soviet-wheel-chocks--212724 Does anyone know something more appropriate for 1950's Korea instead?

Big problem now, I didn't take the weight of the resin tail into account and now the aicraft sits very tail heavy, despite the weight I put in the nose. I drilled a hole in front of the windscreen into a compartment there, filled it with "Liquid Gravity" pellets. I also filled the front of each of the drop tanks the same way. Still not enough weight, even with the canopy and resin ejection seat. I can't figure out a reliable way to add more weight. I can drill into the weapons bay on the underside, but it has gaps/cracks in it that will allow the shot pellets to fall out and move out of place. I'm really at a loss for what to do, I don't know how else I can weigh the nose down without creating an enormous headache. It's a shame to just scrap the whole project after putting in all the above work into it, but at the same time all the set-backs and annoyances have really sapped my motivation. The kit is garbage, almost every single piece has needed filling/sanding/encouragement to fit, and now all of this. I'd appreciate any suggestions.

This kit is a truly unpleasant build... I assembled the wings- and here is the result of the test fit... atrocious. The tabs are minimal so there's very little guidance to achieve the proper wing anhedral, plus there are massive gaps to deal with. I also went ahead and filled the inside of the wing landing light, to provide support for the filler when I sand it away and fill it. Here is the result of a big milliput session. Both joins on both wings needed filling. I built a jig out of lego and tape to keep the wing anhedral close to correct while the glue dried. The tail joined has cleaned up nicely after some Surfacer and sanding Adding to the misery- the two resin rudder parts from the CWS didn't even fit into the tail, leaving a huge gap. Here I've taken some plastic and used it to build up the rudder length The bottom of the top rudder segment needed a small triangular shim, made from black plastic and hard to see in this picture. However, the huge gap filled by the white plastic on the top of the lower rudder segment is very apparent. I also managed to break off the rudder trim tab in the process, not sure if I have anything thin enough to replace it while keeping the gluing neat. Any suggestions? A section of the kit wing had become broken at some point in the prior life of the kit before I bought it second hand, so I used more plastic card to replace the lost section. Finally all major parts are together. Still a bit of seam work and scribing to do, but I'm seeing daylight. Installed the gunsight and replaced the lenses with acetate sheet. Detailed the wheel bays with lead wire and plastic rod, loosely following some reference photographs to give a more busy look. After some primer, also filled in some sink marks behind the wheel wells More seam checking Forgot to add the final elements of the gun ports, those needed lots of sanding into shape as well I'm doing Zameskin's camouflaged aircraft of a light brown and green over blue. I don't know of any conclusive evidence of what colors were used and I've seen several different profiles and interpretations. To start, I'm assuming they would have some Soviet WW2 colors on hand and started out with some AMT-7 blue for the underside, but I'm eager to listen to other suggestions/opinions. Maybe it's a bit too blue? Does anyone know what color would be behind the glass of the ADF/navigation antennas in the lower rear fuselage?

I have a 1/48 Accurate Miniatures SBD-3 from the Coral Sea release, and being an early war Dauntless it has the single 0.30 rear gun. If I wanted to change the build to a later Midway or Solomons aircraft, and change this to a dual 0.30 mount in the back with the armor gunner shield, what would be the easiest way to do this, short of buying a new SBD-3 kit? Are there any aftermarket options available, or is my best bet to get a pair of 0.30 and try to scratchbuild the combination mounting? Thanks

Hello- I recently picked up the 1/48 Zvezda Su-2 and am having some difficulty understanding the different configurations. From what I understand, this is the original version (M-88 engine), with an open cowling and a boxy oil cooler on the bottom of the engine: It's also what Zvezda has included in the kit Then, there's the version with the improved M-88B engine, which has a tighter cowling, and a much more aerodynamic oil cooler on the bottom of the engine (Vector makes a resin conversion): Finally, a few hundred aircraft were built with the M-82 engine, with the cooler on the top of the aircraft, but I can't find a good way to build one of these (not in the kit and no resin conversion): Is this the correct summary of the engine versions? Next, armament confusion. As I understand it, the aircraft originally had two machine guns in each wing, and this is what the kit depicts. Some sources say that the M-88B aircraft had the total fixed gun armament reduced to two. Does anyone know if this was one in each wing, or they left two guns intact on one side and took out the two on the other? Any photographs of the new one-gun layout? As far as I can tell, the kit can be built out of the box as one of the original aircraft, and then with a resin correction can be built into a M-88B aircraft provided you figure out the armament question. Thanks for the help.

Painted the Aires engine components. The detail around the tail pipe exit was a bit better, but in hindsight you probably only need this particular aftermarket if you're having the engine displayed. Looks nice though. Here are all the internals in place, including some nose weight, before I close up the fuselage halves. The fuselage was really difficult to fit together, especially with the seperate pieces such as the weapon bay cover and the rear underside with the ADF antenna. Even when trying to follow the curve of said rear piece perfectly I ended up with a large gap at the rear. The front weapons panels were almost as bad. Not sure what I did wrong, but things are now successfully held together with lots of superglue. Here is the front section, with a particularly horrible gap around the 37mm cannon filled with some milliput. I still need to deal with some further gaps on the weapons access panels. Here she is on a jig I made to keep things vertical when adding the resin tail. And here is the resulting very large step after adding said tail. However, thanks to John Bryon's advice above, I think I have the solution. Milliput to the rescue! After some sanding Also used it and some CA glue + talc mixture to fix the huge gap by the exhaust. Lots of sanding and rescribing in my future. I'm trying to work out the best way to handle the weapons panels next. Might get started on assembling the wings and detailing the wheel bays if I need a distraction from that.

Added pitot made from different sections of aluminum tubing Finished rear gun installation, with opened canopy. Also added the antenna and its wire. Build is pretty much done, I'll make a RFI post when I get the change to take some pictures.

Do you remember if you ended up having to take away much of the plastic on the fuselage side of the join? Or were you able to do the whole thing with the milliput? About how far up the fin did you go with the milliput, if you remember? Thanks

That picture looks great! There is hope after all. Just to clarify, you glued on the new tail, and then laid down the milliput in the gap along the step and sanded smooth? Any technique tips?

Perfect, yes, the drop tanks were jettisonable. As that example doesn't have a nose landing light I think we can assume it is a Mig-15bis. I think I'll go with the conformal slipper tanks then, they are a bit more unique than the regular tanks and from photographic evidence it seems they were used.

Good idea, but I think that will result in the horizontal tail being angled back as well. The resin correction as the more swept tail but keeps the attachment points for the stabilizers horizontal.

Test-fitting showed a pretty bad fit between the fuselage halves and the section of the lower-rear fuselage containing the airbrakes and ADF antennas. I've started carefully attaching it to one side to start, using CA glue and reinforcing strips. I took out the saw and started removing the tail for the CWS correction set. Here is a comparison, you can see that the CWS tail is at a more raked angle. It's a bit subtle when seen this way, I don't know how apparent the difference will be after installation. And now for the big problem of the day: The resin tail doesn't fit! It's much too narrow to fit the kit. This is very discouraging. Why go through the effort of making a resin correction and not taking care that it actually fits the kit it says it's designed for!? I'm coming to the conclusion that the tail correction is a waste of time and money. My options: 1) Add the resin tail, and sand down/remove a bunch of plastic to get rid of the step between the fuselage and the tail before rescribing all the rivet detail. 2) Re-assemble and re-attach the plastic tail and live with the incorrect angle, at least the join with the fuselage will look somewhat presentable. Any suggestions?

N.M. Zameskin, 828 GvIAP 216 IAD, Myaogou, Feb 1952. Blue 263. North Korean markings with a sand/green camouflage This is from an H-Models decal set, "Russian Aces in Mig-15s during the Korea War". It gives the serial # as 2315263.

Hello- Does anyone have any photographs or information about what type of drop tanks were used by Soviet-piloted MiG-15bis during Korea? My specific example is from February 1952. Conformal slipper tanks, larger pylon tanks, or none? I've found a photo of what the caption says is a Chinese-flown unit that have what looks like slipper tanks, but it's very hard to see in the blurry photo and it doesn't have a date or say what kind of Mig-15. Thanks

Yes, that's it. The kit's tail is based off of incorrect drawings and the vertical tail is at the wrong sweep angle.

I know that part was a while ago, but did you do anything special to get the chipping effects with the Mr Color lacquers? It always ends up rock hard and impermeable when I try it, to chip with lacquers using fluid/hairspray i need to lay down a very thin coat of tamiya acrylic of approximately the right shade as a "primer", which means I need much less of the lacquer paint on top to get to the correct color. Otherwise no amount of water or scrubbing will cause the lacquer to chip.