RAAF F-4-1-LO A55-3 1PRU 1943 - Completed

[trickyrich]

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!

[Cookenbacher]

Looks like a really cool project Rich, looking forward to following along.

[dazdot]

Nice one rich watch the nose section take your time lining it all up

[Arniec]

Nice, very nice!!! I will watch this one.

The cockpit is very good. I have used it a few years ago for a what if and works very good. O, and on the same kit. The only difference was that I switched the engines with some merlins. here is a picture.

I like the conversion as well. The only extra's I miss are some resin wheels.

Cheers,

Edited April 22, 2015 by Arniec

[trickyrich]

WOW I missed this post Arnold, very very nice indeed!!!

Thats such a nice conversion and it looks so real I had to check to see if they did attempt it!!!

[pacificmustang]

Looking forward to seeing this progress

[trickyrich]

Ok my first update with this build.

Even though it doesn’t look like I have done all that much I have spent a busy two days on it.

Sorry about the quality of the photos, I have just bought a new macro lens for my good camera and am still trying to get use to it.

All the resin bits were removed from their mounting blocks and given a good wash. The Aries cockpit is amazing, I really hope I can do it justice, plus it way better than any PE bit could make a cockpit look! Plus it has had its initial coat of Zinc Chromate, looks a bit bright but will tone down.

The Quickboost supercharges are also very nicely detailed , a vast improvement to the kit ones.

The basic models wheel well detail is not that great so I decided to add some PE detail to them. There isn’t a PE set for this model (well I couldn’t find one…..) so I am using the set for the Hasegawa model. This should have been a bit of a warning for what was to come next! There is a bit of a difference between the two models of cause. After a try few hours I managed to get the bits to fit….sort of, for the amount that can been seen once finished it wasn’t really worth it.

This was a bit of a warning of what’s to come!!!

The cowling intakes were rounded blanked off holes and looked terrible, these were drilled out. I may extend the depth of these a little before fitting some nice PE grills on them.

Next to be attached was the radiator scoops on the booms, I planned to fit the PE doors at the back along with the radiator grills to add a bit of detail that was missing. The inlet openings were extremely poor and needed quite a bit of work to open them up. If the front openings were bad the rear were complete and utter cr@p! The whole look of them was wrong and the flap door was way to small, so some major surgery was needed to sort this out. Plus there were also no interiors to the booms so I quickly made some out of card. It’s not perfect by any means but at least now it looks like the real thing!

I was sort of toying around with the idea of opening up the camera bays (well boxing them up) so I could fit cameras, figured you should at least be able to see the camera lens through the windows. But time (Non-injection GB of which I am the host) and the fact that in most photos you can’t see the lens has made me decided to leave well enough alone….I have enough to do as it is.

I’ll get the boom finished today with luck as well as doing some more work on the cockpit.

Oh and this arrived yesterday (1/48 P-43 Lancer), am very excited about it, the RAAF used six of these as Photo-Recon aircraft with 1PRU before they were replaced by the Lightning’s. So we can already guess the colour scheme for this baby…….just need some time or a GB now.

[Antoine]

Funny, I've both the P-38 with the same PR conversion, and the P-43.

Obviously, I've to follow this

[Arniec]

Ah finally something done. It looks great! Thanxs for the tip on the oilcoolers. I can use that on my own build.

I hadden't noticed that till now.

Cheers,

[trickyrich]

Funny, I've both the P-38 with the same PR conversion, and the P-43.

Obviously, I've to follow this

nice, the P-43's are a bit hard to come by I notice and quite expensive was well, I was very lucky to find one on eBay from someone in Sydney. I now have to find some detailed drawings/photos of the camera setup on this aircraft, they were located in the tail.

Ah finally something done. It looks great! Thanxs for the tip on the oilcoolers. I can use that on my own build.

I hadden't noticed that till now.

Cheers,

Glad to have helped.

I have had a good day today and made lots of progress....and found more fault, more surgery required to get it right!

Update later, off to awesome wine bar/restaurant with the wife for dinner and fine Italian red wine!!!

[Cookenbacher]

Wow, it's looking good Rich, especially your work on the radiators.

[DarylH]

Watching with great interest! I have this kit and am very interested in what you do with it. I was not aware of this version in RAAF colours.

[trickyrich]

Watching with great interest! I have this kit and am very interested in what you do with it. I was not aware of this version in RAAF colours.

That's what really drew me to this build, something quite unusual and interesting. The kit I'm finding isn't as nice as I hoped, there are quite a few inaccuracies that need to be sorted out,

Like your profile pic, one of yours? I have just built one for the "Lesser Built Airforces GB".

[trickyrich]

Ok time for another update, no messing around here……..

I have made quite a bit of progress though most of it is modifying or more like fixing up errors….and I though this was going to be a simple build!!

I am really glad the undercarriage bays are not normally seen, as they aren’t very good on tis model. The PE bits sort of fit (I know they weren’t designed for this model) but the walls of the wheel wells are way too thick when fitted into the booms, only major surgery could fix this! Anyway there is practically not colour in these bays other than silver/aluminium, will fiddle a bit more with paints to give them a dirty used look but not much else. You can just see a pin in the outside walls, I had to pin the main gear as I used PE sidewalls and there was nothing for the plastic gear legs to glue onto. This will give it a much stronger join and will be less troublesome in the long run.

The new resin nose has been glued together and roughly shaped and given a coat of undercoat to see what will need to be done. Overall it’s not too bad, just a little bit of tiding up and filling and it will be sorted. I would love to fit cameras in it but it will take up too much time for what would be seen. If I was making this for a competition or such I probably would, not too much work just time consuming.

The lower cowlings seem to have fitted quite nicely without too many dramas and only a gap along the rear edges, which is an easy fix. As you can see I added a couple of bits of card to help align these to the booms, highly recommended this for anyone building one of these, will save you lots of unnecessary filling and alignment issues!

The exit flap for the cowling scoops is completely wrong, it’s way to big and the inner duct is wrong as well (where as the radiator scoops were too small!) So using the PE flap as the guide it was attacked with heavy-duty grinders and sandpaper!

A short time later it’s complete (well almost will tidy it up a little bit more), it looks so much better and how it should! I may black off the interior as there is a big open cave inside but it’s won’t normally be seen. Again it will depend on time as to how much more I will do on it.

I am quite pleased with the progress so far even with all the correction modifications, which it needed. I hope to get the cockpit finished today or at least to a stage where I can fit it and close-up the wing/cockpit section.

[Davek72]

Looking great so far. In all the excitement of my first GB I ordered one of these a couple of weeks ago. Don't think I will have time to do it for this build but will be great to see how it should be done properly

[trickyrich]

Ok this will be my last update for another 3 weeks, off to work tomorrow.

Spent most of yesterday finishing up the cockpit, if ended up looking not too bad and I only at that stage managed to break one thing!

Getting it all to fit was another matter all together and the non-breaking run soon finished there! I had to sand the floor of the cockpit to near paper thin to get it to fit, plus the instrument panel/cowling is a bit high, so need to drop that down a wee bit. Amongst other bits I have lost one of the tiny throttle handles, no show of finding that piece, guess that’s why Eduard supplies lots of spares. It doesn’t quite look so good now in the photos as there is lots of dust in the cockpit area now….cleaning to be done!

Cleaned up the join on the lower section of the cowls as well as re-scribed some to the panel lines on the booms.

Just taped together at the moment but she is starting to look the part, there will be a little bit of work to get the nose to fit correctly but that shouldn’t take too long.

The wheels are a bit crap so I have bought some Ultra Cast Diamond pattern ones which look great, plus the paint as well. So with luck on my next break I may get to a stage where I can paint her.

[Arniec]

That is looking great.

Know you mentioned it, I hade to sand the cockpit floor and the undercarriage bay as well to get a better fit. Mine was still not propper placed in the end, but I squised it in with some clamps and glue. It is still closed today so no worries there.

Cheers,

[trickyrich]

It's nearly there, I just need to do a bit of fine adjusting, for that I needed have the wing cockpit sections glued up.

Didn't do any work on it yesterday or on the Viper for than matter, very lazy. Now off to work for three weeks so will have to think about what I could have done!!!

Am happy with what I managed to achieve so far, it's all progressing nicely.......even with my mods!

[Peter Lloyd]

Bonza work so far Rich on that Lok'eed Bloody Lightnin'.

[pacificmustang]

great build and progress

[old thumper]

Nice choice of camo and markings, looking good.

[wellzy]

Looking good very nice build

Les

[trickyrich]

thanks for all the kind comments.

Will be back home on Tuesday so hopefully I can get a bit done this break even though it's a short one.

At this stage I have a horrible feeling I may not get this baby over the line in time, think it will be very a very close call as there is still quite a bit to do! I just done need any set backs or hold ups. The only outstanding correction required is re-positioning the small intake between the oil cooler intakes, hopefully that should be a simple modification.......maybe!

[Arniec]

Go for it Rich!!! I know you can do it. Than move on to the other build.

Cheers,

[trickyrich]

Well I’m finally back to this one but unfortunately I wouldn’t be able to get too much done this break, looks like this one will be right down to the wire….

Not too many photos but a lot of work has been done. I left this with the fuselage/wings being glued together…after three weeks they would have definitely have dried! The tape had even gone hard, so a quick clean up of the joins and next the nose.

They had some rather large location lugs on the resin nose, which actually didn’t help as they got in the way profiling and tiding up the joint to the fuselage, so off they went. This allowed the nose to be custom fit correctly to the main fuselage, I actually got a nice join so was happy with this. The only bit of real work required was a small bit of shaping to get the profiles to match. Oh yeah I also added quite a bit of weight to stop it from sitting on its tail.

It will look better once the panel lines are done and a final polish up.

Next was that tiny intake in the nose cowls, it wasn’t actually as easy as I hoped and in the end I bailed on what I had originally planned, though this was after I had drilled the larger holes! So I have made myself some extra work I didn’t need, will tidy up what I have done and drill the intake hole in the correct position!

The pods were new fitted along with the tail. This too required a lot of test fitting and shaping until I got a good fit. Most of the joins were good with just a small bit of filler used in a couple of areas. There were though some bad gaps and miss alignments, these were fix using a couple of methods, for gaps either thin plastic strips or stretched sprue was used to fill the hole. For the section that was misaligned stretched sprue was used to build up the hollow area, which will be sanded back once completely dry. I prefer using sprue to filler as you get less mess, easier to clean-up/shape and you end up with a nice smooth plastic area.

She’s certainly looking the part now! All that needs doing now is re-scribing of panel lines, a job I hate! Then it’s on to painting…with luck!

As mentioned this will be all I can do this break, off tomorrow out west to RAAF base Wagga Wagga, off to visit junior, he’s doing his Army Aircraft Mechanics course there, I was there 32 years earlier doing my fitter course!