Jackson Duvalier

Good to see you cracking on with it. 😎 Are you done yet?

This has been my experience with Dora's P-43 kit, but it's really no big deal for anyone who's ever built an old Airfix or Revell kit. The camouflage looks really good, Eric. Did you freehand or mask it?

I'd never ever heard of this one. Or its manufacturer. Or either of the manufacturers of the kits. Hat's off to your perennially obscure tastes, hsr. 😄 To this observer, it looks almost like an updated XP-77 with side-by-side seats.

The forum software doesn't make it a seamless experience, every time I feel motivated to post pictures I have to spend a few minutes remembering my Flickr password and relearning how to transfer the code to Britmodeller so the pictures look right. 🙄 Once I've got it, it goes smoothly enough. The photo posting how-to thread is helpful.

Happy to see this coming along so well! 😎 The incorporation of orange into the SAAF roundel and fin flash are a clever nod to South African history, IMO; using the outward form of the RAF markings but also acknowledging the culture that preexisted the machinations of perfidious Albion. 🙂

I'd like to see some pictures of your results. Have you heard about the hairspray method? (Cute Schnauzer, BTW, my mother has had three of them over the years.)

Curtiss used a locally-sourced "interior green" that was (at least to my eye) greyer/browner than standard, I usually mix it from yellow zinc chromate and a brownish olive drab. From what I can see via the internet, H226 is drabber and not quite as green as Interior Green, so it might be an acceptable match for a casual build. I'd be tempted to add a touch of yellow to it for highlights. My guess is that by the time Bearcats were rolling off the production line, Grumman had access to proper Interior Green.

Some of my favorite builds start that way. And then when I get done, I wish I'd taken the thing a bit more seriously from the beginning, as I'd have done a better job! Lovely Hornet, Erik. I shan't take you to task about using words like "chippy" and "ho" on a family friendly forum, especially as the difference isn't one of kind but of degree.

Admirable job on the wing fold seams and leading edge corrugations. Those are make-or-break details on this kit, and Airfix made them none too easy to finish well. You must've had a ball masking the clear bits!

Seems you're having a jolly time building these, even with those bottle glass transparencies. 😎

The P-51A kit from High Planes Models captures this a little better than the Academy P-51NA but not quite as slabby flat as the Frog kit (I just went and compared them all). HPM's Allison Mustang always seems to get forgotten as an option. I presume this is because either a) nobody knows it exists; or b) High Planes kits are inconvenient to obtain and worse to construct. I really need to build the thing so as to have a more informed opinion. Now that I think about it, HPM also offer a "correct" (in the sense that it extends back to the wing spar) resin wheel well for the early Mustang. As I was rummaging in the stash, I also came across a forgotten Italeri P-51/Mustang I kit which is nice in some areas but the wing roots are wrong and it appears to have the usual over-deep fuselage. These don't seem to be mentioned often in "1/72 Early Mustang" comparison discussions, maybe because the wings and fuselage are wrong? 🤔

TBH if I dip canopy parts I can pretty much expect to go through at least two to four dip/dry/strip/re-dip cycles before I'm satisfied with the result. Lately I've been more inclined to carefully paint the acrylic on the outside off windows with a fine brush after the model has been painted and unmasked.

Ugh, no thanks! How did he deal with them not lining up from top to bottom? I just put red paint in the little divots Hasegawa moulded in to represent the holes. In other news, I've continued to break the trailing edges of the Flyhawk dive flaps with my 1mm drill, which I suspect isn't very sharp. I stopped before any irreparable damage occurred, need to think through my next steps. I'm pretty impressed with the kit overall, the interior is absolutely fantastic.

Household ammonia itself will work fine to remove Kleer, dilute with water it if you feel nervous using it neat. Acrylic floor polish will also dissolve itself, so you can use it to even out scuffs with an over coat, sometimes sucessfully! I'd try painting a thin layer over the whole window surface first and see if that works, you can always strip it later if need be. Handling freshly-dipped transparencies has caused me some trouble in the past (I once spent half an hour recovering a canopy oafishly dropped into the depths of the actual bottle of floor polish, won't be making that mistake again). I now try to leave a stub of sprue attached to the part as a gripping surface for tweezers and remove that after the acrylic has cured. It helps to have a "clean room" to dry the parts in, something like an upended plastic yoghurt pot or the like, keeps dust and cat hairs from marring the finish. A piece of paper towel lightly dampened with water, alcohol, or Windex makes a good post-dip landing pad to wick away excess Kleer, which despite its otherwise magical properties can leave visible runs and distortions.

Sorry to hear about your decal lifting, as well as your bad day in general. Had you sealed the insignia down with a layer or two of varnish? It's not a sure cure, but it can help. I'll also offer to send you star-and-bars decals if you need them, I've had enough issues in the past that I eventually broke down and ordered a big old sheet of them so I could stop robbing them from otherwise intact decal sets.

My kits arrived in this afternoon's post, so I can now speak with more certainty. I agree with alt-92's advice to use a 1mm twist drill, it's just the right size. My AWG drill bit set tops out at around .039" which is a tad smaller than the proper .042"-ish diameter (3" divided by 72). The holes do indeed look better after chasing them, but be careful drilling the ones along the trailing edge. The plastic is thinner there and breaks easily if unsupported. I found gentle finger pressure against the outside of the flap whilst gently drilling from the inside prevented further damage. That's 60 holes down, only four more flaps and some minor damage control to go! 🤪

I love this kit and you've done right by her. The seat belts in particular impress me, I presume they are from the Eduard Zoom set?

Lovely model, Chris. The only real flaws I can detect with a superficial once-over are the splayed landing gear and the wing/fuselage joins on the underside. The seams are not a big deal and probably fixable if you wish to go that far; some modellers skimp on underside tidying in the interest of increasing their build rate, given that most viewers will only ever see the topside. Wonky gear is something I still struggle with, I'll suggest improvised fixtures (I like to use Lego), patience with alignment, and allowing plenty of time for the glue to set before resting the model on her wheels. I'll echo Bertie's suggestion to try the Tamiya Spitfire next. It's very simple, fits well, and builds quickly-- ought to be an eye-opener after a twin-engine AZ build. If you can build functional rolling stock from a craftsman kit, you'll be able to build fantastic aircraft. Do you have any of your rail modelling efforts displayed online?

I haven't checked this out myself yet as my Flyhawk SBD kits are still in transit, but if the holes are small enough to bother me, I suspect I'll simply open them up with a slightly larger micro drill. It seems unlikely to me that either the Aires or Eduard brakes designed for the Hasegawa kit would be a drop-in replacement on the Flyhawk kit. Also, I don't like the Aires dive brake sets, the ones I have are all warped.

No stencils over stripes. On my be-striped P-51B, I painted the fuel cap red for visual interest but I'm pretty sure they'd have simply been painted over.

Good work, Rob, I like models with a personal connection. Good to see the Madam has a Little Friend. 😎 The Metalcote really gives a fine finish. You're a brave man to go after it with a buffing wheel!

I really admire the greenhouses on your models; I wouldn't want to mask them, even with an Eduard set!

I remember this kit very well! Yours turned out better than mine. 🙂

Thanks, Jon. I hope nobody has a mental picture of me flailing about like Keith Floyd at the modelling bench. 😄 But since you've raised the topic, experiments recently conducted here at the Atelier DuVal Multidisciplinary Research Station And Test Kitchen have demonstrated that Tamiya acrylics can be successfully reduced for airbrushing with whiskey (testing was performed with Tullamore Dew, 40% ETOH). The new Arma P-51B/C is an absolutely smashing kit, but I think the Hasegawa + Academy or AZ wing is still a reasonable approach to an early Merlin-powered Mustang, especially for modellers with the older kits in inventory. The wing swap is just that fast and easy.

Bedders posted a useful and inspirational WIP and an RFI for his AZ/Hasegawa mash-up. This was the tack I took to build my own kitbashed P-51B. As I recall all it took to fit the Academy wing to the Hasegawa fuselage was a little trimming in the scallop where the center of the lower wing trailing edge fits against the radiator scoop; a five-minute process unless you decide to be a show-off and drop the flaps while you're down there. The precision of inter-kit fitment surprised me until I reflected upon Academy's rather open perspective regarding other manufacturers' intellectual property.