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Hello everyone. I'm back with a rather repetitious build of the RS Aleutian P-38E. Cookenbacher did one a while back, which is worth referring to: Cookie's P-38E I also did one, representing Laven's second P-38E, #80, with some vagaries about it's color: Laven's 2nd P-38E Unfortunately, when I did mine, Cookie's pictures were missing, so I didn't have that to help out. Thankfully for all of you, he has restored them. I am building yet another of these, for two reasons: 1) my endeavor to build one of each type of aircraft associated with George E. Laven, Jr. -- he of the colorful aircraft fame; and 2) I decided to try the resin aftermarket cockpit kit offered by RS for this P-38, to see whether this would alleviate some of the fit issues that both Cookie and I encountered in the cockpit area. We shall see how that goes.... The kit and the cockpit set look lie this: I began in the time-honored (and usually necessary) tradition of assembling and more or less completing the cockpit area, which of course has to be built into the model at an early stage: It has a little more detailing than the kit, and the wheel well is not as tall. We'll see if that helps. Also new (to me) is the use of the Dap Rapidfuse, which is an ethyl cyanoacrylate for those interested. For the rest of use, that equates to a thick CA-type glue that tacks up in 30 seconds and hardens in 30 minutes -- and is odorless! The later is important to me, because over the years I have fried out my nose-holes from using CA and get burning eyes and a runny nose from the regular stuff -- which has played havoc with my building of resin models. This stuff is great for gluing resin parts together, as well as adding landing gears, doors, antennae and pitot tubes after the fact. Alas, I cannot worship it as the universal anti-solvent, because it dries with a slightly rubbery consistency, as do all the other odorless CA glues. That means that you cannot sand it to a smooth finish like regular CA. Pity, as I was looking for another minor deity to worship. (Just a joke folks, don't get crazy!) Actually the kit 'pit is pretty good, except for the wire frame you have to make for the seat back, which is included on the resin seat, as later pics will show. Next the painted and mostly assembled cockpit is shown glued to the lower wing, to center up the landing gear well. Test fitting with the top of the fuse also revealed that the resin cockpit improved upon the fit problems, it did not solve them, so more sanding was needed on the bottom of the wheel bay, as well as the bare resin part atop the instrument panel, as you can see below: The two red "L"'s above show the added lead fishing weights cut down to fit in the nose -- a requirement. Can't say how much I used as I just stuffed it full! Next, the upper fuse half was glued to the bottom half (after much sanding and test fitting!), but only at the area where the clamps are shown. The nose seams were left un-glued for the moment: As Cookie points out in his build, the bottom nose half is a little wider than the top half, so each side of the nose was glued and clamped separately, beginning with the left side: Followed after drying by the right side. This resulted in fairly reasonable seams -- but not perfect -- on either side: All the finely-etched detail is going to go bye-bye -- drats! Hmm... see that I've nicked the headrest area with a clamp. I'll have to touch that up! Until next we meet... Ed

Hello everyone! This will not be a "normal: WIP, because the model is already built. However, I feel that certain aspects of the model deserve some comment. Without further ado... I was researching the colorful aircraft flown by Col George Laven (mostly his F-104C and F-84E and F-100C aircraft), when I began to uncover more of his interesting story. While he didn't get the first kills in the Aleutian campaign, he did get two early ones, in 1942, flying in his P-38E "Itsy-Bitsy", buzz #76. (His F-100C had the same buzz #, which is why he "adopted" it as his own). He also had two additional Aleutian kills, I think in his second P-38E, also named "Itsy-Bitsy", which featured rather "unusual" markings. I believe he had the next two kills in the second aircraft, because there is a press clipping on-line showing his first P-38E #76, on the runway at Dallas, Texas, where he had flown it home for repairs. I do not know whether this first aircraft ever returned to the war. Interestingly, Laven got the last confirmed P-38 kill of the Pacific campaign, flying a P-38L-5-LO, named "Itsy-Bitsy II" -- the subject of the Hobby Boss 1/72 P-38L kit. See a pattern developing here? Also of curiosity, he is often left off the list of P-38 aces, even though he clearly had 5 confirmed kills! But, I digress. Back to the subject of THIS story, the RS Aleutian P-38E Lighting kit (which has parts to build the P-38 E,F,G,and H models, if you are so inclined. You'll have to furnish your own decals for other marks). The RS kit conveniently provided the decals for BOTH of then Major Laven's P-38E's, #76 AND #80, which is the subject of current discussion. The kit looks like this: As would be expected, the detail on this kit are finer than those of the venerable Airfix kit of yore, but that kit is still very presentable. For me, the deal sealer was the decals. I plugged along, and the first thing to be aware off, if you're a beginner, is that there are NO locating pins anywhere on this model, so nothing snaps together. You must hold the pieces in alignment and apply very thin cement, to the inside of the parts where possible, and on the outside, where not. This resulted for me, in virtually every seam needed a little (but only a little) filler: Here, let me put in a plug for the Montex Mini masks #SM 72208, for the RS P-38 model. It says it's for the G/H models, but worked fine, as you can see in the photos. They are black, as shown above, and sturdy enough that I'm going to attempt to use them twice, being the cheap sort of miscreant that I am. These are particularly useful for the canopy side windows, as trying to otherwise mask the tiny frame would be maddening. They also give you wheel masks which are not perfect, but okay, and you really don't need them anyway, as the wheels aren't that hard to paint otherwise. In any event, I had struggled along to this point, when I discovered that Cookenbacher had built one last year or so for the WW II group build. (I saw that thread one time, and wish I had had it to start with, but didn't. Also, after seeing it once, I couldn't find it again! Cookenbacher, if you see this, please feel free to post a link to your work, as there is no need to duplicate it here, when your work is certainly worth seeing! There was also another workup of an RS P-38D, but all the pictures had gone away, so it wasn't very useful -- pity. I had two major problems with the kit. One that Cookie described -- the fit of the cockpit was pretty bad. I managed to straighten out most of it, except the seat, which despite much sanding to lower it into the cockpit, still prevented the canopy from fitting down properly. I finally laid it back a bit, somewhat like a recliner! RS makes a resin cockpit for this kit, and I have acquired on for the other P-38E that I hope to eventually build, and will see whether the resin kit solves that problem. The other major problem I had was the fit if the wheel wells into the booms. I never did quite get that right. One other thing -- this aircraft has props that rotate counter to each other. On many forums, I have read of the problems that many modelers have when trying to align propeller blades that simply don't "snap" together nicely. I have therefore decided to put forth my own method, which is both cheap and certain. (Some of you have already seen this on my P2V-3 Neptune thread, so you can just skip this part! My method requires a piece of cardboard with a tiny hole in the center of a circle that is divided into four, and also three parts. You could go crazy and draw 5 parts too, for those of you who might use such things (You know who you are!) Anyway, my cardboard in the side of my Doc O'brian's Weathering Powders box, on the theory that I'll probably not lose the poders, and so therefor might not lose the propeller jig! To the left, above, are shown the box with pattern, and the props, painted and with decals installed. The second pic shows the prop hub installed into the hole in the cardboard, which fortuitously, happens to lie approximately in the center of the alignment pattern. Also shown is one piece of plastic card glued on it's edge, and on either side of it, more scrap card; these both to raise the tip of the prop, to keep it in the same plane as the hub. This is, of course, so the the prop blades lean neither for nor aft from their arc of motion. The edge-glued (all white glue) piece is simply to establish the angle-of-attack or "thrust pitch" of the prop blades, as shown i picture 3 above. You can add the extra bits and do all blades at once, or do as I do, glue up one blade at a time, let dry, then rotate the glued prop and glue up another blade, etc. End result looks like this: Since the blades are "handed", just use the opposite side of the alignment lines on the jig for the "other" sided prop. Duck Soup! The last point of interest for this project is the rather unusual marking of the aircraft, hence the "Mystery" title of the thread. There was a cover of a 1943 issue of Life Magazine that featured this aircraft: Discussion thread here: 3-toned lightning If you read the thread you will probably determine that the most likely meaning of this photo was than supplies being hard to come by in the Aleutians (The Forgotten War), maintenance crews used whatever they had on hand, probably Neutral Grey to paint surface badly eroded by the volcanic, pumice-like dust of the Aleutian Islands. I preferred to imagine that this photo depicted a trial of the "Haze" type paints, originally used on the F-4 Lightning reconnaissance type, and rumored to have been tried (and liked) by some fighter groups. Not sure we'll ever know for certain, but until/unless we do, my guess is as good as anybody's.; though probably not as informed! Lastly, by way of a teaser photo, and as a way to show the results of the canopy masks as well as the result of my first attempt at the "salt" technique of depicting paint weathering, I present the following photo of the completed model: If you want to see more, RFI is here: RFI Link Thanks for looking, Ed Insert other media

Just a few pics to show my recently completed 1/72 RS P-38E, in the marking of the second P-38E flown by then Major George Laven during the Aleutian campaign: Markings are a little speculative, as discussed in the WIP here: P-38E WIP One thing to note -- if you build the RS P-38's, leave the mass balancers off till the very last step. I knocked mine off many time and finally lost them both. Have another kit on order and will try to copy and re-install them later on! Thanks for looking, Ed

Ok well I finally get to start this build, as members are already finishing!! Well as I have mentioned I’m and going through a bit of a phase at the moment (nothing unusual there!) of RAAF WW II aircraft, preferably the more obscure the better. Well strange as it seems the RAAF only operated 3 P-38 Lightning during the war (operated by 1PRU) and were loaned a few more by the USAAF. There is a bit of conjecture over whether the original 3 were F-4s or started as P-38E’s and were modified either in the US or here in Australia. They operated from Mid 42 to late 44, all were eventual written off with one incident resulting in the lost of the pilot. I will be building the last of the 3, A55-3, she started off life as a P-38E with the serial number 41-2144 (there was even for a while some conjecture as to if this serial number was correct.), she was converted to F-4-1-LO either here in Australia or in the US. She served with 1PRU from 27Feb42 till she crashed due to undercarriage failure on the 10Dec43, the wreckage is now in the Darwin Aviation Museum. I had forgotten what I had bought for this build other then the Red Roo conversion kit to turn her into a F-4, but it seems I may have gotten a bit carried away! Ok the base will be Academy’s 1/48 P-38F (Glacier Girl), it was recommended for the basis of the conversion. Then….some masks, Quickboost’s Air Intakes and Superchargers, they look so much better than the kit ones. Aires resin interior along with Eduard PE set, it’s for the Hasegawa version, but I’m bound to find a use for it. Hopefully it will be a quick build, I was very relieved to find out the RAAF aircraft didn’t have the “Haze” colour scheme used by the USAAF as that would have been a pain to get right! First up tomorrow will be lots of washing and resin cutting…maybe even some painting! Have been waiting for this build for soooo long, am really looking forward to this one!

I bought an RS Models P-38E a year or two ago in order to build an Alaskan P-38. Upon opening the box, I realized it would have to wait until I'd gotten a few short-run kits under my belt. Well, it's 2015 and I've built four short-run kits so far this year, and this STGB is the perfect opportunity to tackle this bad boy. I have to admit that when I opened the kit again today, it still seems a bit intimidating, but I'll do my best. Thanks TrickyRich and Mish for providing us with another group build.