Torbjorn

Is it really? I think there are few subjects less treated than the P-51D when it comes to AM decals. Not that I mind more of course.

You better vote this through, I have a BE2e to built!

Stuck on the propellers and landing gear and she’s done. Will try to get some pics for the gallery soon.

A sleek and pretty machine

Oh, this time of the.. decade.. again? Have a few Airfix 1/72 , plus a B from unknown manufacturer. Still have one uinbuilt Airfix, I should maybe get rid of it (ie build it) before Eduard release theirs.

If they add an Erieye configuration they should get a few customers in Sweden at least.

A bit of touchups and more painting, and we’re almost there. The exhaust tubes are much shorter than those the Tamiya instructions show, wonder if there were different versions.

Make one from plastic sheet. It’s easier than you’d expect. I put some picture here on how to (post towards the end of the page): If you are interested I can find the pdf of the book I took the method from, which has more detailed instructions.

Thanks, I mixed a bit of blue with the gloss black primer. Will tone it down later. Hit the first real snag: decals are provided for the yellow leading edges. These refused to conform however, rather they started curling the opposite way. Eventually I gave up and masked and painted them, not without difficulty (I do not like yellow!). Decals are on, just code numbers in addition to the suns. Some touch-ups, protective coat and some wee weathering left.

Wasn’t it the P-400?

Maybe this is the right place to ask… I made the mistake of buying Eduard overtrees of the B-25J strafer some year ago. They were selling it at the sweep so I assumed no more strafers. That turned out to be wrong, and now I have a kit difficult to find decals for (and would have been cheaper to wait for the new kit… ). I see Foxbot has one set, but that seems to be it.

I started using the sequence black-white grey-white-white-white…. and stopping whenever I liked the shade, usually at or before the first white layer. Vallejo ”White grey” have good coverage, Vallejo white not so much. — It looks very neat from here. No issues with the primer being too thick? That at least is the concern I hear when using ”non-modelling” paints, though I’m a bit sceptical to that claim.

Certainly some of Nakajima’s engineers ended up making cars: the designer of the Homare engine became a director at Nissan. — It’s refreshing how quick things come together when the parts fit. Applied primer (Vallejo olive drab) and a few layers of dark green. It’s not clear to me exactly which colour they were, but I’m going to try a quite faded plane anway. Used Vallejo 71.124 (USAF green) as a based and mixed with light grey and Vallejo’s RLM70 and sprayed thin, partly covering layers with each mix. Only the props and engine cowlings will not be green. The latter I’m trying to figure out if they should be gloss black, blueish black or whatnot.

Nakajima or Hobby 2000? The latter seems to have as business model to repack Japanese plastic and combine it with Cartograf decals and sometimes masks and/or PE. Brilliant. I was painting something else and instead of pouring out the leftovers I thought, ”where else do I need red?”. In hindsight it wasn’t that clever: should have primed first, this red doesn’t bite well.

Thanks gents. Made a mockup of the ”radio” behind the observer. It will hardly be seen, but I wanted something in that empty space. There is no mount for the lower guns, so I made one, as simple as possible: two wedges. One, to determine the angle. I used the Tamiya instructions (thank you Tamiya!): Unfortunately there is little room on the wing piece, and this makes it flimsy. After attaching to the fuselage there is no access to add a supporting piece under it though. A second wedge solves this. Here it is (cylinder scrap) freshly glued to the first and barely stuck. It is slightly too long, so when I press the pieces together it will glide into place and provide support. I did try with a single triangular shape sitting on both wing and fuselage, but it was difficult to make it keep the correct angle. With the two pieces I could set the angle solidly before glueing the wings to the fuselage. Fortunately the wings fit like a glove. Will hardly need any putty. Added most transparent parts too. The engine cowls will be painted before attaching if they can fit good enough. Two fuel tanks are provided, I think I will add them. Here we are - fortunately the tailwheel and nacelles lift it high enough for the guns to clear the ground, otherwise I would inevitably break them sooner or later.

Looks like that Gauzy stuff made a marked inprovement on the transparencies. Might have to try.

The engines look like this: Quite rudimentary, but fortunately deep in the nacelles. Could have added ignition wires I suppose. Put the fuselage together, which comes in not 3 but even 4 pieces to cover several versions. The spine piece doesn’t fit that well, and could have benefitted from more support. I should have added scrap plastic. I didn’t, and will have to spend some time filling and sanding instead. ”Stressed skin” is popular these days - I’ll call imperfections stressed skin effect! Here the fuselage is dryfitted in the slot between the wings - the fings fit perfectly. One wing half was badly warped, but nothing that boiling water couldn’t fix. The upper gun mount is very much simplified. I kept this but added some stretched sprue to simulate the actual mounting frame. The lower gun mount is non-existant and you have to make it yourself. In reality there was a common mounting frame, but the part holding the lower pair can hardly be seen through the windows anyway. I’m considering just putting a piece of plastic with holes drilled to keep the gun pipes sticking out through the bottom. Lots of touch ups will be necessary: Between the cockpit and the gun house was some large pieces of equipment (radio?) that is totally missing. The space looks empty now, and can be seen from front and back, so I may scratch something together to fill it.

Off we go. The cockpit is rudimentary with completely bare fuselage sides. I understand this is common Fujimi procedure of the time. In the past I’ve spent hours detailing such things, but that turned out to be impossible to see after installing the canopy. Wise from this I only put together some rudimentary longerons and boxes. I found the instructions for the 1/48 Tamiya (thank you scalemates) that I used for guidance. Based on that I made the hole in the cockpit floor, so the observer can actually observe something through the bottom window. Using the same for colour instructions we are now at the stage as seen beliw. A bit of washes and scratched on this and it will be time to close it. The fuselage comes in three pieces, as there were several different versions with different spine which I guess Fujimi covered or planned to cover. There are non-used pieces that make up twin-gunned remote-operated towers that looks interesting. The blue looks more saturated in this photo of some reason, it is much closer to pure aluminium here.

Wow, six pages already. What’s that, approaching 150 builds?

It is admitedly a good-looking machine. Having never even seen a Zvezda kit, I look forward to following along.

”Moonlight” is arguably a better name for a night fighter than the funny salamander which my brain pictured when I first saw the name. I had forgotten I had this kit: I ordered the other boxing, which had all blackish schemes rather than this with two green-over-gray schemes, and got sour and put it away. I hope the GB format will produce enough mojo to complete it. It is certainly an interesting machine, with some 500 completed of different versions. This one had four cannon in schräge-musik-like configuration, two up, two down. The box, containing Japanese plastic repacked in Poland with Italian decals (yes, Cartograf!): Two large sprues with individual protective plastic: The engines are rough, but will be mostly invisible deep inside the nacelles anyway. Looking a bit closer, one can see the age of the tooling, with some of these sinkmarks in strategical locations: I’ve begun priming some parts. Perhaps I may find some all-black (or rather blackgreen) scheme I can patch together decals for - basicly need only a code number on the fin.

The Bofors autocannon? I read they had big troubles practicing with those, as they completely obliterated all the practice targets…

Both! We want both! 😀

No, but Windisch’s machine could be doable with the stag from any Degelow boxing, of which there are plenty in 1/72 Now I’m tempted, seldom seen such a screaming paintjob with ugly contrasting colours from the entire palette.

Well, elegancy too is in the eyes of the beholder, but if you put Mosquito wings on a Do-17 you do get pretty close.