Combo Build 1/48 Academy & ProModeler; Finished!

[georgeusa]

At the start of this year, one of my goals was to do comparison builds. I think it will make me do more kits and reduce the ever growing, multiplying exponentially stash that, frankly, it just out of control. I do not know how these things happen. (Perhaps build one kit a month, buy 5, maybe?) Anyway, this group build seems like the perfect place to start. Plans are to complete comparison builds of the 1/32 He 219 (Revell & ZM), 1/32 Mustang (Tamiya, Trumpeter, ZM), 1/48 Me 410 (Meng & Revell), 1/32 Skyraider (ZM & Trumpeter), 1/32 Me 163 Komet (Hasegawa & Meng) and 1/72 Sunderland (Airfix & Italeri).

In the stash at the office, (Yes, the stash is so out of control, I have two one at the office and another in a storage shed) I found the ProModeler P-40 E Warhawk and the Academy Tomahawk IIb , both in 1/48.

Both of these kits are reissues. The ProModeler kit was originally issued in 1978 by Revell. The Revell kit was redone as a ProModeler kit with the box instructions having a 1995 copyright mark.

The Academy kit was originally produced by HobbyCraft in 1996 as a Pearl Harbor Defender. This Academy kit was reissued in 2011 with updated decals for Aces of the African Front.

The Academy kit will be done as the mount of Pilot Officer Neville Duke as every P-40 collection should have a shark mouth! And, in my opinion, the shark mouths of the 112 Squadron are far more aggressive looking than the AVG versions.

The ProModeler kit will receive aftermarket decals. The kit decals look fine, but they are a little aged and yellowed. And since I have an abundance of AM decals for the P-40 (how did I acquire so many?) the Cutting Edge “Colorful Warhawks Part 1” will donate the scheme for an Aleutians’ tiger scheme.

The obligatory sprue shots. First Academy.

Then ProModeler

And the build will begin next.

[georgeusa]

First update. The instructions have been reviewed and I am going to try and build the two kits in the same sequence if possible. The Academy kit would have you start with the propeller and then putting the two fuselage halves together. The ProModeler sensibly and predictably has the cockpit as the first order of the day. Now for the first comparison. Academy's instructions.

ProModeler's instructions

It really is unfair to compare any kit instructions to an early ProModeler instruction sheet. If you do not have any experience with the ProModeler series, you really need to get one just for the instruction sheets. Not only are the ProModeler instructions highly detailed as far as the build process (with labels that actually name the part you are putting together, not just a number, I like that. Makes it a bit simpler for me to describe the actual part name than my usual “I connected the dumaflatchie to the thingamajig and it fit!”), but they have many photos of the actual aircraft sections you are building showing you what it should look like. In addition, there are “Modeling Tips” scattered throughout the instructions to help build a better kit.

The Academy instructions are adequate, but basic with diagrams showing where parts should be placed. Enough said; onto actual building. Both kits allow the cockpit to be built up and then inserted into the already completed fuselage. I tend to like this as I can fix the seams on the fuselage without having to worry about dust getting into the cockpit or knocking things loose during the sanding sessions. I will follow Academy’s lead and build up both fuselage halves first prior to beginning the cockpit. Academy would have you first assemble the propeller so it can be trapped between the fuselage halves and it will rotate. To ease handling and painting, I will build the propeller, but I don’t care if it rotates or not, so it will be glued in place after the camo scheme is applied. It is a rather simple procedure with locating pins to make sure the propellers are placed at the correct angle.

The Academy fuselage halves have sidewall detail that needs to be painted prior to construction. The question arises should the interior be painted in British interior green or green zinc chromate? I am guessing zinc chromate from the Curtiss factory. But a part of me wants to differentiate the two planes. Accuracy versus artistic license? I wimped out and painted the interior zinc chromate. The halves are then put together with the chin assembly.

Seam work will be necessary, so the putty is broken out, applied and will dry while I begin on the ProModeller fuselage.

Before you can join the ProModeller halves, the chin radiator assembly has to be built and painted and the exhaust pipes have to be installed.

There is a nasty injection mark on one of the intake chutes.

The ProModeler kit seems to have a bit more flash and injection marks to clean up as opposed to the Academy kit.

The radiator parts are assembled.

And then it is installed, along with the exhausts into the fuselage halves. The ProModeler fuselage halves have no sidewall detail so just a quick splash of interior green is used prior to assembly. Once joined together, the radiator assembly is stuck way down deep inside but is kinda visible.

The Academy kit has a chin insert with the radiator represented by some detail inside of the chin part. Once the ProModeler fuselage is assembled it look like, oh joy, more seam work.

While the putty dries for both fuselage seams, the cockpit interior is tackled. Here are the cockpit parts for the Academy kit.

The instrument panel has some very light detail, albeit quite good that, hopefully I can bring out with some dry brushing.

An aside, you know your vision is getting bad when you do not see the detail inside the instrument dials until you look at a close up picture. And that was with my magnifiers on. Getting old is not pretty.

Here are the cockpit parts for the ProModeler kit except for the clear reflector gun sight. This will be added and painted after the cockpit is assembled. The Academy kit doesn’t have a reflector sight as it should have an old ring and bead sight. The good folks at Academy saw fit to not include either in their parts. These will have to be either scratched or found elsewhere at a later time.

As with the Academy kit, the ProModeler kit’s IP has some very nice detail to it.

With the sidewalls as separate pieces, the interior detail of the ProModeler kit is superior to the Academy kit. The ProModeler seat comes with some crude seat belts as surface detail.

Each kit’s cockpit parts are painted and weathered. First up the Academy kit.

The Academy kit is really basic. There is some sidewall detail on each fuselage side, but it is not much. The IP did spruce up nice though.

The ProModeler’s cockpit parts are quite good given they are 20 years old and injected plastic.

The ProModeler IP also reacted well to dry brushing.

The ProModeler cockpit was then assembled.

After I assembled the cockpit I remembered that prior to assembling it, I was supposed to remind myself I really should paint the seat belt detail before I attach the sidewalls as it will be easier to do; oops. The seatbelts were now painted.

Now the Academy kit does not have any seat belts. A quick dash over to my stash found a donor set of seat belts that would work. (I know when I build the Royal Class Spitfire set; I will wonder why there is a set of seat belts missing!) These were installed.

Why is it PE resists bending the way you want it to bend and it chooses some convoluted direction to take that is precisely opposite of what direction you need it to go? Just wondering.

To avoid sanding the fuselage halves (which I really must do) I move onto getting the wings together. Both kits have taken a similar approach to the wing assembly as they both have a single lower wing to which two upper wing halves are joined. The Academy kit has the wheel wells formed as part of the lower wing with a hint of detail in them. The ProModeler kit has a wheel well insert that must be first installed prior to the upper wings being joined.

Both of the wheel wells were inserted into the lower wing and then the upper wing halves were glued in place.

When I moved over to the Academy kit, I noticed the lower wing had the shell ejector shoots molded as detail like this.

This compares to the very fine detail on the ProModeler wing

Out comes the drill, some files and a few minutes later the Academy lower wing looks like this.

Now even though the ejector shoot detail on the ProModeler kit is by far highly superior to the Academy kit, the ProModeler kit did leave me a nice present on the lower wing to clean up.

Yep, the infamous Monogram/Revell trademark stamp that was always somewhere on the bottom of their kits in the 60s through 90s. I had hoped this kit would not have one as there is the same information stamped on the bottom of the cockpit floorboard. Now one of my quirks is I like to leave this stamp on most of my kits for the nostalgia aspect of it. I am debating about removing it for this build. The Academy wings are then put together.

I can’t put it off anymore so the fuselage seams are sanded and touch ups are done. Then, both fuselages receive the necessary parts that need to be installed prior to joining the wings to the fuselage. On the ProModeler kit this only entails adding the tail planes.

The top side of the tail planes look okay; the bottom side, not a pretty sight.

Not only is there a large gap, but the thickness of the attachment point is wider than the tail plane itself. More fiddling, filling and sanding.

The Academy kit needs its nose guns added

And its tail planes.

Thankfully the fit of the Academy kit is much better. It is time to join the wings. The Academy kit goes together with just a hint of fettling needed to get everything in place.

The only place some minimal filler is needed is at the lower seam between the fuselage and wing. Life is going good.

The ProModeler is next. There is a bit more fettling and fiddling needed to get the wings joined on the ProModeler kit.

The wings had to be taped in place as the join did not look like it was going to be pretty. After the glue had set and the tape was removed, the starboard wing root was just ugly.

Out came the superglue and some persuasion. The gap was filled, but there is still a bit of cleanup prior to painting. Both kits are in the last stages of preparation for painting. For grins, I thought I would place them next to the Typhoon I am working on.

There is a tremendous difference between the size of 1/24 and 1/48. Either the Typhoon was a huge plane in relation to the P-40 or my scales need work! That’s it for now. As always, all comments are welcome.

[dazdot]

Wow George good work and nice to see a comparison of 2 kits,like this still can't believe monogram did the stamp thing that late

[Skids]

Cracking start George, I like the comparison build (I am far too slow to build 2 at once)

Look forward to seeing more

[georgeusa]

Wow George good work and nice to see a comparison of 2 kits,like this still can't believe monogram did the stamp thing that late

I was surprised too. I thought the stamp tradition died out in the late 70s, early 80s. Who knew?

[azureglo]

Good to see you on board George, I'm having Nigel moments manhandling micro etch for my 1/72 Academy, you choice of scales is far more sensible.

Anil

[stevej60]

Great start George,two cracking schemes too!

[georgeusa]

Paint and Decals are on update. I finished with the seam work so it’s off to the paint shop for these two. I start with the bottom colors for each one, blue for the Academy kit, grey for the ProModeler.

Then the bottom of the each kit is masked off so the top coats can be put on. Since the ProModeler only gets one color, I start with the easy one with a dose of army green.

After the paint dries, it gets a coat of Future in preparation for the decals.

The Academy kit gets a coat of tan topside.

The camo scheme is masked off and then the brown is applied

The Academy gets a coat of Future and it is back to the ProModeler kit. Before I can apply the decals, the exhausts on this kit need to be painted and weathered. Some gun metal, some rust, some black and some weathering dust and this is what you end up with.

It is now time for the decals. The ProModeler kit is up with the aftermarket decals from Cutting Edge. I am expecting greatness from these decals!!

Expectations are a funny thing. Its sometimes like a date, you are expecting to have a wonderful time, maybe get a little lucky, but no, who knew you were seeing the wicked witch of the west! That is what happened with these decals. The first ones to go on would be the Tiger Head. If that went poorly, I could always resort to another set of decals. Poorly may be an understatement; see for yourself.

Not only did they not fit well, they were brittle and broke very easily. What started out as 2 decals soon turned into 6. I cobbled them together, but to say they were not conforming to the kit surface is putting it mildly. I will let them dry a bit and then try some Micro Sol and “friendly” persuasion. Now what is weird, all the rest of the decals went on without a problem.

Granted the one white decal that circles the fuselage was initially resistant, but it wasn’t too bad. I can say that once they are in place, they pretty much are intractable. Moving them around to line up was not easy. Now I am dreading the Academy decals.

Nary a problem; not even with the shark mouth that needed to wrap around the cowl in two different locations. These decals were a joy to work with and apply. Now back to the Tiger Head and its “Hammer Time”. (I know, all you young whippersnappers have no clue what that means and it is an arcane reference.) After much work and more than a few sessions with Micro Sol and paint brushes I am kinda pleased.

It finally snuggled down to the detail and curves. It even hugs so well you can see the screw outline underneath. There are a couple of minute wrinkles, but from a viewing distance of 12 inches, it looks pretty good. Next up some weathering! As always, all comments are welcome.

[dazdot]

Quick work George and good work too

[georgeusa]

Weather update; cloudy with a chance of . . . er, chance of dirt and stains? Both kits will receive some dirtiness, some wear and some tear. The ProModeler is attacked first. On the bottom, the kit gets a coat of Flory’s Dark Dirt wash and a lot of it is removed. Then the machine guns and shell chutes get some attention with some Tamiya Smoke.

The wheel wheels get painted green, and then washed with Smoke and then some small highlights with Testor’s metallic silver.

And the Revell stamp gets its own weathering as I couldn’t bring myself to sand it off.

On top the panel lines were accented with a dark wash, and then various places were gone over with either silver paint or a silver pencil.

From the close-ups, it looks like I handled the plane too soon as there are some fingerprints I need to blend!

The Academy kit was my next target. The bottom getting a wash of Dark Dirt and then some general wear and tear issues are attempted to be represented.

On top, the Academy kit had a panel wash and some wear and tear done, but not near as much as the ProModeler kit.

Again, the close-ups show me not to take the kits from where the paint is drying and then start running around the room with them making engine type noises. Must have patience before I can play with them.

The next steps will have the weathering process go in different slants for each aircraft. The Aleutian aircraft weathered quite differently than the desert aircraft. The Promodeler kit will receive more techniques that will reveal paint deterioration. The Academy kit will have more of a faded dusty look to it. More work to do on the paint. As always, all comments are welcome.

[georgeusa]

Oops. After looking at the pictures above, one thing I did notice is the metal showing on the fabric covered flaps probably is not too good. Will have to rectify that in the next go around. Sorta like paint chips showing metal on a Mosquito! Sometimes I just get carried away.

[Cookenbacher]

Those mighty P-40's are looking good George. I really like the weathering, and nice job getting the gigantic tiger decal to conform.

[wellzy]

Good work on office , and a very good build all round

Les

[dazdot]

Good work George I always chicken out of chipping because I'm scared of screwing it up

[georgeusa]

My technique isn't so much chipping as rubbing. I put some paint dry rushed on rub it a bit with my finger to try and get the look the original paint has rubbed off. Do the same with a silver color pencil. The above kits still need some work, but they are getting there.

[georgeusa]

Back on track update. I finished my Biafran Texan for the Lesser Built Group Build so it is now back to this group build. Since the weather here is atrocious (sleet, snow and a highway department not equipped to handle either!) rather than working, I am playing. I am at the closing stages of both planes and doing the end chores; like the wheels:

Still have the other side to do and some touch up of the covers. The propellers were next on the agenda.

They still have some scratches that need to be put on but are essentially finished. All of the undercarriage parts have been painted and weathered.

The ProModeller struts are on the right, the Academy on the left. There is a very noticeable difference in size and detail. Now I know the Academy is a C model and the ProModeller is an E, but was there really such a big difference in strut size. As far as detail, the ProModeller has Academy beat hands down. The ProModeller strut has a brake line molded as part of the strut.

Next up, the wonderful chore of masking two canopies. The ProModeller was first.

And then the Academy.

There are some differences in the length of the two canopies with the Academy being smaller. Also the side panels have two frames each on the ProModeller while the Academy only has one frame.

Finally, I took drill bits to the exhausts. The ProModeller was the most fun as the exhausts were already on the kit.

The Academy exhausts were much easier to do as the plastic is a little more user friendly.

Both of the kits had a protective top coat put on and are drying. Once dry, all the hangy down things will be put on. After that, I will use the just superb ProModeller directions to finish up with the detail painting of the navigation lights and the antennae wiring. As always, all comments are welcome.

[dazdot]

Good work and a nice comparison

[georgeusa]

Last update ‘cause they are finished. The last little pieces needed to be fitted to both models. The undercarriage was started on the ProModeller first. The ProModeller has an accessory gas tank that was put in place and weathered (as I have yet to remove the excess weathering powders in the photo!) The main struts and braces were put in place.

The tail wheel was then installed

And then finally the wheel doors.

Then the Academy kit had a similar approach with the main struts and braces in place.

I’m really glad for the ProModeller instructions because I knew where and how the braces were to be attached to the main struts. The Academy instructions are not only vague as to how to attach the braces, but are misleading.

Next, the tail wheel was installed, but no picture as the one I took was really out of focus and would hurt your eyes. After the tail wheel, the wheel doors were put in.

The detail nod in the undercarriage department has to go to the ProModeller kit.

Then all of the little details were done, like the pitot tubes, the machine guns for the Academy kit (very nice detail, but a bear to get them all lined up), and radio mast for the Academy kit. And no pictures as I forgot. I then went to the ProModeller instructions for the navigation lights and their placement. The wingtips were the same on both kits. The ProModeller instructions call for a light to be on the port side fuselage near the spine, behind the canopy. I simulated this with a drop of canopy glue that was then painted for both kits.

The ProModeller kit has some navigation lights on the fuselage just under the canopy at the front. There is not a corresponding light on the Academy kit and I didn’t know if these were specific to the E model and not the C, so the Academy kit did not get these lights. Similarly, at the rudder, there is a navigation light on either side for the ProModeller kit that doesn’t exist on the Academy kit. The ProModeller kit has the rudder link on the port side as a separate piece.

The Academy kit has this represented by raised detail.

After the picture above, I had to go back and attack the tail fin decal with a bit of setting solution to make it behave better.

The gas vent pipes are represented as a separate piece on the ProModeller kit

On the Academy kit, this is represented by raised detail.

I didn’t realize what this was until I put on the ProModeller part. Now, I will have to go back and at least make some vent holes, if not pipes.

The Academy version does not have a gun sight, but a ring and bead site. This was installed.

As I was trying to put on the bead portion, it careened off into that space and time dimension only modelers are aware of, to be lost until about 2 months from now when I am looking for another part, can’t find it, but do find the bead part for this kit! I found a suitable piece of wire for replacement, put a blob of canopy glue on it and then painted it to match the ring part. (The ring part is really nice and very delicate.)

So, until I can persuade SWMBO that I need some of her wonderful strands of long hair for my radio wires, I am deeming these two birds finished.

I will do a proper RFI of these two kits, along with the Biafran Texan when the weather here gets nicer. It is supposed to start snowing again tonight, so it may have to wait until the weekend. As always, all comments are welcome.

[dazdot]

Good work George two very nice replicas they look the business

[stevej60]

A couple of great builds George,and an excellent informative WIP.

[Cookenbacher]

Wonderful builds George! I'm a little partial toward the Aleutian Tiger, but that desert Tomahawk looks awfully menacing.

[georgeusa]

Wonderful builds George! I'm a little partial toward the Aleutian Tiger, but that desert Tomahawk looks awfully menacing.

I believe yours in the smaller scale was much better. I keep saying it is finished, but I see more things on it now that need to be done. I like the Thomahawk too. I always thought these shark mouths were a whole lot more mean looking than the Flying Tiger version.

[wyverns4]

Hi George,

Two very informative builds at environmental opposites.

Nicely done, nicely done

one question though; on the close-up of the starboard side of the 'tiger's' nose there appears to be a long irregular line that crosses several panel lines. Is it a mould defect?

What I find most interesting is the dichotomous approach between the manufacturers in regards to detail and fit, especially when looking at the relative age of both moulds.

Christian the Married and exiled to africa...

[georgeusa]

I took a look and think you are talking about a line running behind the exhausts. On the actual model with my stylish visor on, you can just make it out. With the naked eye, or at least my old ones, it is not apparent. Where it shows up is when I blow up one of the pictures. It looks like a mold defect as it runs from the wing up along the fuselage. I am not sure why it's there as it extends over two parts. At first I thought maybe one of SWMBO hairs got trapped under a layer of paint. I tried scaring it lightly with a knife blade and that is not it, it is the plastic itself. In closeup photos, it's evident; with the naked eye, almost impossible to see.

[georgeusa]

Couldn't resist when the weather here turned not real nice. However, perfect for an Aleutian Tiger.

Enjoy. When the weather clears a proper RFI shall appear. As always, all comments are welcome.