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Hasegawa 1/48 P-47D Bubbletop "Kokomo"


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Hi all!

Here's my premier natural metal finished aircraft - one of many I hope! Really enjoyed this, even though it took much longer than it should. A few 'improvements':

- Airwaves PE cockpit bits/oil cooler flaps (there was lots more but it was inaccurate or unusable)

- Aires gunbay

- Engine wired with copper speaker cable strands and fuse wire

- Cowl flaps separated and actuating rods added (bit out of scale but hey)

- Curtiss prop from a Tamiya kit

- Brake wires from fuse wire of various sizes, and in the wheel bay.

- Tail wheel door rams from fuse wire

Finish is alclad white aluminium with some bits duraluminium and Humbrol metalcote. I preshaded individual panels with alclad gloss black to simulate stressed skin.

Tamiya acrylic for the gear/gun bays and Humbrol enamel (all the rest).

Decals are Superscale and weren't much cop, too shiny and colours much too bright. I ended up stripping off the stars and bars and replacing with kit decals, the rest got a dust of Humbrol satin.

I left this aircraft lightly weathered as it was a non-combat plane, only used by Kepner to monitor his air forces. It would have been kept pretty smart, besides the usual English mud on the wheels!

Comments and criticism please!

Chris

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Edited by burncpt
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Nice work, great NMF and I like the weathering. The cowl flap rods look great. Really looks the part.

What's going on with the shoulder straps though? We can't see them that closely but it looks like they are sticking out from the seat?

Edited by Tbolt
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Haha, well the loose end is supposed to be 'hanging' over the top of the buckle but I think it needs to be bent more as I suppose the material was quite flexible. Will remedy if the superglue holds up! Also, it won't take long for people to notice but there is another glaring error in the finish but I haven't the heart to correct it (and I can't unless I get hold of a Tamiya kit of another set of decals...) :chair:

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Haha, well the loose end is supposed to be 'hanging' over the top of the buckle but I think it needs to be bent more as I suppose the material was quite flexible. Will remedy if the superglue holds up! Also, it won't take long for people to notice but there is another glaring error in the finish but I haven't the heart to correct it (and I can't unless I get hold of a Tamiya kit of another set of decals...) :chair:

Yes belts are very flexible just like the seatbelt in your car and will not sit up anywhere.

I'm too polite to mention the other error ;)

Here's one of the cowl rods just for you Tbolt :)

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Very nice!

Edited by Tbolt
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Yes belts are very flexible just like the seatbelt in your car and will not sit up anywhere.

I'm too polite to mention the other error ;)

Very nice!

I hope someone else does soon just to put me out of the misery of suspense! Also from pictures, the gear legs should maybe have been olive not silver but I must confess I went with what some other modellers had done...

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I hope someone else does soon just to put me out of the misery of suspense! Also from pictures, the gear legs should maybe have been olive not silver but I must confess I went with what some other modellers had done...

Yes the colour pictures of this aircraft do seem to show OD legs, but hey this aircraft could of had it's legs replaced and some point for silver finished ones!

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I guess I was swayed by the fact that every photo I could find of existing aircraft has silver oleo legs too. Do you know if they were finished in OD from the factory or left bare metal?

I believe they were done in the factory, I've seen other D-25's with OD legs but I'm not sure at what point they changed to silver.

gabygabreskicrewp47thun.jpg

Edited by Tbolt
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So you noticed then :doh: I may get another set of decals and strip the noseart off with masking tape (hell, the fuselage bars came off easily enough) and replace them the right way round! Initially I did it on purpose as the decals had the word 'buffalo' prominently on the port side where it's clearly not in photos of the real plane. Didn't check whether they were 'handed' though and just assumed they'd view the same on either side!

Edited by burncpt
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So you noticed then :doh: I may get another set of decals and strip the noseart off with masking tape (hell, the fuselage bars came off easily enough) and replace them the right way round! Initially I did it on purpose as the decals had the word 'buffalo' prominently on the port side where it's clearly not in photos of the real plane. Didn't check whether they were 'handed' though and just assumed they'd view the same on either side!

Well if you did want to redo it I could sent you the Tamiya nose art as I have a few spare ;) If the Tamiya nose art is as big or bigger than the Superscale one you could just apply it over the top so you wouldn't have to worry about removing the decal, in that case I could sent you two sets to prevent any see through.

The Tamiya decals do not have the word "Buffalo" on, but it was on the left hand side, but like you said it's not in the photo of the aircraft from the war I have seen (though there is a late war picture of this aircraft with an P-47N style dorsal fin fillet but you can see below the nose art) so it was obviously added at a later point.

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Edited by Tbolt
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oh my lord!!! That is so clean.......and just bloody fantastic. I love the P47....what a big beast she is and your effort has done her proud. Just a great job....well done

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Well if you did want to redo it I could sent you the Tamiya nose art as I have a few spare ;) If the Tamiya nose art is as big or bigger than the Superscale one you could just apply it over the top so you wouldn't have to worry about removing the decal, in that case I could sent you two sets to prevent any see through.

The Tamiya decals do not have the word "Buffalo" on, but it was on the left hand side, but like you said it's not in the photo of the aircraft from the war I have seen (though there is a late war picture of this aircraft with an P-47N style dorsal fin fillet but you can see below the nose art) so it was obviously added at a later point.

Thanks Tbolt, that would be a real bonus! Shall I PM you with some details?

I'm guessing the 'buffalo' was added later, Superscale must have ballsed up as their drawings had the invasion stripes and the reference photos I used were later that year, August. To be honest, I found the accuracy generally poor, the 'no step' flap panels were the wrong shape, the data was in an Arial kind of font instead of stencilled and mostly too big to fit on the access hatch whose contents it was describing!

Thanks all for such kind words, it's really amazing to get positive comments from modellers who seem to turn out models of consistently higher standard than this! [bow, scrape] :yahoo:

Edited by burncpt
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Thanks Tbolt, that would be a real bonus! Shall I PM you with some details?

I'm guessing the 'buffalo' was added later, Superscale must have ballsed up as their drawings had the invasion stripes and the reference photos I used were later that year, August. To be honest, I found the accuracy generally poor, the 'no step' flap panels were the wrong shape, the data was in an Arial kind of font instead of stencilled and mostly too big to fit on the access hatch whose contents it was describing!

Thanks all for such kind words, it's really amazing to get positive comments from modellers who seem to turn out models of consistently higher standard than this! [bow, scrape] :yahoo:

Yes just PM me with your address and I will send you two sets of the nose art.

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