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Hobbycraft 1/32 Mustang 1A plus extras


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I had intended to complete my stalled 1/32 Dragon Mustang next, but as there are several P-51D builds on BM at the moment I have decided instead to start my Hobbycraft 1/32 Mustang 1A  which is a scaled up version of the Accurate Miniatures 1/48 kit. The AM kit was considered to be pretty accurate ( no pun intended ) so I'm quite happy about the general shape, but the main wheel well has the usual problem of the rear face following the line of the well rather than the main spar, and I have purchased the Aires wheelwell designed for the P-51B which should be the same size. I have also purchased the Vector cockpit set which has finer detail than the kit parts, and will probably replace the main wheels before I'm finished.

Here are the obligatory sprue shots, plus the aftermarket sets and some of my reference material, the sharp eyed amongst you will notice that I have already hacked out the wheel well in preparation for the Aires part.

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More soon, I hope.

 

John   :pilot:

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  • 2 weeks later...

08 April

A little more progress to report.

Having prepared the lower wing for the Aires wheel well I have done the same with the fuselage halves so that they will be ready for the Vector cockpit set. The locating points for the Hobbycraft side panels have been removed as have parts of the moulded-on ribs in the radio compartment and finally the instrument panel shroud as a more detailed version is provided by Vector. The nose is provided in two halves which I have cemented separately to the rear halves as I find that this usually gives a better result than joining the complete nose to the rest of the fuselage.

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I have been reading quite a lot about early Mustang interior colours lately and it can be very confusing. In the O'Leary book on building the Mustang there is a chapter specifically dedicated to painting RAF Mustangs which states that in all RAF Mustangs the wheel wells were aluminium lacquer or dope over primer with the rear face ( main spar ) in yellow zinc chromate, but elsewhere I have read that this combination is the most unlikely to have been used. In the same chapter the cockpit sides and bulkheads are described as " yellow green " with a note explaining the mix of this colour which matches exactly the mix for green zinc chromate, with the seat in dull dark green.

I have a bottle of Prince August green zinc chromate which I have tried on the fuselage halves, and some of the cockpit components but I'm not convinced by the result, it looks almost like a shiny version of dull dark green to my eye. I have been looking through my paint stocks and amongst my Lifecolour paints I have two bottles marked interior green, one of which looks the same as medium green 42 from Aeromaster and the other much lighter . I have sprayed the lighter of the Lifecolour interior greens onto some cockpit parts and after drying it now looks to me more like RAF interior grey/green! This is a closer match to the cockpit photos in my Allison engined Mustang book but these are of a restored Mustang1 and an A36 not originals, so I have to decide which colour would be more accurate. Any ideas anyone?

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The Vector cockpit walls are extremely thin between the frames and as you can see I managed to break the port one while removing the frame so that I could place it in the fuselage, so beware anyone who plans to use this set, having said that the detail is excellent as you can see from the limited number displayed here.

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Unless anyone can definitively prove otherwise I will go for the zinc chromate and silver scheme for the main wheel wells, as apparently O'Leary had access to official documents and inside information when preparing his book, so I will mask off the main spar and mist some Tamiya flat aluminium over the rest of the primer. 

That's all for now. 

 

More soon, I hope.  :pilot:

 

John 

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  • 1 month later...

A little more progress was made over last weekend.

 

After experimenting with several other shades of green for the cockpit interior I finally settled for the Prince August Green Zinc Chromate  ( not my favourite paint ) and resprayed the major cockpit components except the seat and associated structure which I have sprayed in my version of Dull Dark Green  ( Tamiya  Deep Green ). The smaller cockpit components, about 40 of them, were given an undercoat of Halfords grey acrylic primer before being sprayed in several shades of "black" and Mr Hobby Metalic colours, which may not be strictly accurate but will add a little variety. 

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I fitted the broken port sidewall into the fuselage half before adding the individual accessories and was pleased to find that the " A " frame structure behind the seat will cover the crack in the sidewall.

Two seats are provided, one with and one without harness, but as the harness is the wrong type for an RAF Mustang 1A I will use the one without harness and look for a suitable aftermarket Sutton Harness. The instrument panel has also been constructed.

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Here you can see the various radio boxes attached to their trays ready for fitting into the fuselage, and the " A " frame rollover structure.

 

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I have fixed most of the individual boxes to the starboard sidewall with just the oxygen regulator and emergency hydraulic pump still to be added, the handle of the hydraulic pump was unfortunately broken off when it arrived but is safely stored in a plastic bag.

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Here you can see the floor, rudder pedals, seat support structure and armour plate and the IP coaming with the gunsight just sitting in the slot. emergency hydraulic pump minus handle, and various " boxes " to be added to the cockpit sides and A frame.

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Small items to be added to the cockpit, the red items are fuel cocks which fit on the floor either side of the stick and the yellow ones are flap lever ( two supplied so I will have a spare ) The item on the right is a T handle for the instrument panel, I managed to dislodge the same item on the other side of the block but have since found it and also stored it safely in a plastic bag. Other items include the stick, emergency hydraulic pump minus handle,  port console and various " boxes " to be added to the cockpit sides and A frame.

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In this photo can be seen:- 

Top row left to right, two components for the A frame, switch box and bomb release quadrant (probably not used.

Middle row left to right, signal pistol breech, switch panel, oxygen regulator and signal pistol/cartridge pouch.

Bottom row left to right, mixture and throttle levers, three vents for the IP shroud, undercarriage handle, small lever and elevator trim wheel, The rudder and aileron trim controls are already separated and stored safely in the above mentioned plastic bag.

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The wheel well has now been sprayed flat aluminium apart from the rear face which has reined yellow zinc chromate. I have not yet decided wether to join the upper halves to the lower part  before attaching the wings or attach the lower part first. I will wait to see how good the fit is when the cockpit has been added and the fuselage halves joined, probably about Christmas given my rate of progress.    

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I might add more details to the inner parts of the wells, depending wether I leave the inner doors open or closed.

That's all for now, feel free to comment.

More soon, I hope.

 

John  :pilot:

              

Edited by Biggles87
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  • 5 weeks later...

I finally managed to get back to the bench after a couple of weeks enforced abstinence due to a succession of visitors, it's nice to see old friends but they do disrupt my modelling schedule.

The cockpit is starting to come together now, after fixing the starboard cockpit wall I dry fitted the A frame and checked that it lined up with the port wall without any misalignment of the fuselage halves and then cemented it into the starboard wall. 

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Next came the lower shelf with radio boxes and the battery which protrudes through the frame.

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Above this sits the shelf with more radio boxes and power supply which fits further back into the fuselage leaving a gap between it and the A frame which will eventually contain a camera, the basis for which is supplied in the kit

I next attempted to dry fit the floor ahead of the A frame so that I could tape up the fuselage and place it on the taped up wings to determine which method to follow fitting the wings ( see above ) and whilst doing this I managed to spring one of the nose halves which I had previously joined to the rear fuselage. I don't know what sort of plastic was used in the kit but I have so far tried Revell Contacta, TET and superglue on these joints without much success so I went to my LHS (60km away ) with the intention of getting some tube glue but was persuaded that Plastic Magic was what I need, it wasn't cheap so it had better work, I suspect it is similar to Tenax 7R and Plastic Weld.

Having removed the other nose half which was now loose, I discovered that I will actually have more room to work and will be able to add the cockpit floor and IP after joining the fuselage halves, I've never been a fan of joining everything to one side and leaving it handing and hoping for the best.

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The control column and fuel cocks have now been added to the floor, but the elevator rod which runs back from the stick and under the seat is not supplied in the cockpit set even though the stick connection and floor support are present, so one was made from an appropriate diameter length of sprue.

The Plastic Magic does work on this type of plastic and I have glued the nose halves together again

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And the port fuselage. I lost both the aeleron and rudder trim knobs while detecting them from the runner and have replaced them with some ( slightly oversized ) plastic rod, and I have also added some placards left over from an etched set for the P-51D

As can be seen in some of the above photos there are some pretty severe sink marks between the ribs behind the rear cockpit windows, which I did consider filling at the start of the build, but with all the radio equipment in place they will not be visible 

 

The above was completed before my break, with the intention that all would be ready for joining the fuselage on my return. Wrong!

When I test fitted the fuselage halves again I realised that the hole for the tailwheel was visible through the rear of the cockpit and decided I had to do something about it. I made a bulkhead with a representation of the rear face of the radiator to fit just ahead of the rear radiator flap, which solved the " see through " look but was still left with just a hole for the tail wheel well. 

A tail wheel well was fabricated from plasticard, it's not entirely accurate but hopefully a reasonable representation of the real thing, based on the few photos I have of that area.

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 I decided to paint the interior of the rear fuselage aluminium ( not having any real evidence of the actual colour ) and the wheel well itself in Zinc Chromate Yellow, but I am open to correction if anyone can tell me differently before I actually join the fuselage halves.   

  

That's it for now, and thanks for watching ( if anyone still is! ). I'm hoping to progress a little more quickly now as summer, rather than winter,  is my modelling season because when it gets very hot here I hide from the sun in my man cave in the afternoons while SWMBO splashes about in the pool.

 

All comments welcome.

 

John  :pilot:

 

 

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Thanks Antonio, it's taken me a lot longer to get to this stage than I thought it would, but I hope to join the fuselage halves this week and after that progress should be a little faster. I have removed and adjusted the Aires wheel well set to make sure I don't have the lack of dihedral which poor Olivier suffered with his Tamiya P-51D.

Have you done anything with your P-51B conversion lately?

 

John

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  • 3 weeks later...

I had originally decided to finish this aircraft as an example based in the UK in grey/green camouflage but as my Revell 1/32 Mustang is also destined to have invasion stripes ( Lou IV ) I have changed my mind and will use the third marking option in the box which is an F-6A on loan to 225 sqdn RAF in Tunisia with MTO camouflage, which will make for a little variety in my Mustang collection.

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I am assuming that the aircraft would have had american equipment so am now using the Vector seat with harness and the kit camera rather than trying to adapt it into the british one, and am now in the process of making a mount for it based on the photos in the Squadron Signal Walk Around on Allison engined Mustangs.

As previously mentioned, I was hoping to join the fuselage halves last week, but every time I think I'm there I discover that something else needs to be done first!  

Having planned to add the cockpit floor after joining the fuselage, I realised that it would be impossible to do with the seat assembly in place, and very fiddly to fit the assembly after joining the fuselage so I have added the floor and supported it with sprue to avoid the potential " hanging in space " problem, but still plan to add the IP and rudder pedals later.

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The rudder pedals have been added to the instrument panel which is now ready for installation through the nose and I have painted the seat Dull Dark Green with Tamiya Khaki seat belts which just need a wash to separate then more from the seat colour and the metal attachments picked out with a mixture of Mr Hobby aluminium and steel . I have also sprayed the instrument panel cowl DDG, but given it a light uneven coat to try to represent fading in the bright Mediteranian sunlight and a tyre black strip to represent padding at the front edge.

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Finally the fuselage halves have been joined ( minus nose ) using Plastic Magic applied with an old fine brush. I started at the tail and worked my way forward, holding the halves very slightly open at the front with a sliver of fine plasticard to allow the cement to flow along the seams. Instrument panel next, I have attached a " pusher " to aid positioning. In case you're thinking " he's forgotten the tailwheel ", it is in there but I have removed the fork rather than knock it off at some time, and I will glue it back on at the end of the build.

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The next stage will be fitting the instrument panel and then the nose, and before I attempt any wing to fuselage fitting I will attach the tailplanes. This is my usual practise where the tailplanes are horizontal as it gives an extra reference for getting the dihedral symmetrical.

That's it for now, I always find that getting to this stage probably takes more than 50% of the build time, so hopefully progress will now be a little quicker.

 

All comments welcome

 

John  :pilot:

 

Edited by Biggles87
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  • 3 weeks later...

A little more progress while hiding from the sun.

Instrument panel, nose and tailplanes fitted. The fuselage fit was generally good, it will just need a smear of Mr Surfacer 500 in a few places The tailplane to fuselage fit was not so good and after more than an hour of filing, sanding and dry fitting I decided that was as good as I would get so filler will be applied.

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 As mentioned earlier, I had been undecided on how to fit the wing to the fuselage ( I briefly considered glueing the top halves first ) so had not joined the top halves to the lower wing but now a decision has been made to glue the lower wing first, after seeing a build on LSP. I test fitted the lower wing with the Aires wheel well in place and found that it overlapped the lower nose because the Aires part is about 2mm wider ( front to back ) than the kit wheel well and this had pushed the forward part of the wing/nose underside forward. After spending some time with my trusty sihrsc file shaving both of the mating surfaces a fit was achieved, although there was quite a step between them which was partially sorted by glueing some Plasticard under the forward part of the join.

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 I also noticed that there was very little contact area between the rear of the wing and the fuselage so I made a ' wedge ' of laminated Plasticard to add some more, and after an hour spent fettling and fiddling I finally glued the lower wing in place. 

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The kit wing has cutouts for landing lights in both sides, but my references tell me that this mark of Mustang had one only in the port wing  so I have boxed in the area and will fit a clear sprue lens before adding the top half. On the starboard wing I will simply add the clear part and paint over it, after eliminating the panel lines.

Lower wing now fitted, so far so good.

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Upper wing halves fitted. ( note the poor tailplane/fuselage joins )

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I decided to fit the upper parts starting from the wing tips and working inwards an inch at a time because the Plastic Magic is extremely thin and in the current heat was evaporating almost as soon as it touched the plastic. This worked well for the port wing and resulted in a near perfect wing to fuselage joint. I was not so lucky with the starboard side and ended up with a 1mm gap between wing and fuselage, perhaps I did not have the lower wing completely centred on the fuselage. The gap has been filled with Plasticard and will eventually be smeared with Mr Surfacer 500.

There are two other bad joints which need attention, both on the underside of the fuselage, the forward wing to nose as previously mentioned and the join at the rear of the under fuselage intake, both of these have now been filled and will be left for 48 hours to cure completely before sanding begins.

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The next job will be to fit the IP shroud and the windscreen before something gets knocked off!

Apologies for the last three photos, they were taken in bright sunlight with a blue surround which has been reflected onto the plastic. They looked OK on the camera screen and it's too bl++dy hot to go outside and do them again.

That's all for now folks, feel free to comment.

 

John  :pilot:

 

PS Guess who forgot the landing light lens before the wings were glued.  Doh

        

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