F-51D Was that too fast?

[Biggles87]

My original plan was to use the new Eduard P-51 for this build so I ordered some Overtrees and a LooK instrument panel, but ordered the D-5 version by mistake, stupid boy, so I will be using the Meng version instead.

 

The kit is quite comprehensive as you can see from the sprue shots below, and is designed to be a "snap-fit" build and has large male/female attachment points in the centres of the fuselage halves, but as I will be using liquid cement and may remove them. I bought this kit mainly because it depicted the main wheel wells correctly, but was disappointed to see the wings covered with ' rivet ' pinholes which will have to be filled and sanded as on the real aircraft. Never mind, if all the kits we bought were perfect we'd have nothing to complain about would we? 

My intention is to build the airframe as quickly as possible so that I can concentrate on the painting before I run out of time ( my record of finishing GBs is abysmal ), and being a Korean War machine it could be quite a challenge achieving the oxidised finish to the unpainted fuselage and wear and tear to the lacquer finish on the wings. I have quite a lot of reference material on the Mustang which includes some good period 'photos of machines in Korea, so I don't have any excuse for getting it wrong.

Starting soon, I hope.

 

John  

[Pappy]

G'day John,

 

Could you please expand a little on what the overtrees include? Can you build a whole kit from a set or do you have to order specific sprues? I have seen overtrees advertised but do not know what this involves

 

cheers,

 

Pappy

Edited December 15, 2019 by Pappy

[gingerbob]

Overtrees are simply the styrene sprues, sans photo-etch, decals, etc. 

 

Edit: Oops, welcome aboard, Biggles!  Good to see yet another take on the P-51D (first Meng build) in the GB!

Edited December 15, 2019 by gingerbob

[Biggles87]

Wot Bob said ( thanks ).

Hi Paddy, the only downside is that you can only buy them from the Eduard store, and the postage is almost as much as the kit, but if you buy more than one at a time they’re good value.

 

John

[TEMPESTMK5]

Good afternoon John

Welcome aboard have fun with your build

All the best

Patrice

[Biggles87]

Well, I've made a start on the wings, but first a 'photo of some of the " extras " I've collected for this project.

 

Above can be seen a Superscale decal sheet with the markings for the chosen aircraft, on top of which sits a Waldron placard set for the P-51 ( more of that later ).  The Yahu P-51 instrument panel is not designed specifically for the Meng kit so may need adjusting, and an Aiscale sheet of generic placards/data plates. Just visible on the right is a Reheat PE sheet of switch panels which I've had for a couple of decades but might come in handy.

 I've have brush painting the first 40% back from the leading edge of the wings with Mr Surfacer 500 to fill the rivet holes. Below you can see a sort of ' before and after '  because I have started sanding the lower surface but have yet to start on the upper surface. When the sanding is completed  I will give the whole wing surface a coating of Halfords grey acrylic primer, again sand it back to leave an impression of the remaining unfilled rivets and panel lines.

 The wheel well has been plugged into the lower wing surface to give the wing some rigidity during sanding and will eventually be painted aluminium with zinc chromate yellow on the main spar area, but by the time these machines reached Korea the area had been roughy overpainted with US Interior Green according to my Squadron Signal Walkaround book so this will be brush painted to leave some of the original colours showing through.

 

I had hoped to have more to show by now, but as usual life got in the way of modelling, not to mention constant rain which has taken the humidity in my man cave back up to 70 percent so no airbrushing yet.

Thats all for now, any comments, suggestions, criticisms welcome.

 

John  

[Biggles87]

 

By the time they got to Korea Mustang cockpits had become quite worn and scruffy and often covered in dust with the original US interior green showing through the black

and this is the effect I will be aiming for.

 The cockpit area has been airbrushed with US Interior Green using the last remnants of a bottle of Prinz August paint. The paint cup was nearly empty as I did the left side console and instrument panel mount/bulkhead so I added a drop of IDA to eke it out, which proved to be not a good idea as it did not mix properly causing it to splatter, but as this will be overpainted anyway I think I'll be able to get away with it. I will use Lifecolor for the seat and it's mount, seen either side of the IP mount, and hope that there is not any great disparity in the different manufacturer's interpretation of the same colour. 

 

Finally, both upper and lower surfaces of the wings are now ready for a coat of acrylic grey primer, which after sanding will be followed by Zinc chromate Yellow.

 

That's it for now, I'm off to spray the wings so that I can start sanding them back tomorrow.

Feel free to comment.

 

John

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Biggles87]

Progressing at my usual glacial pace, I now have a little more to show for my efforts.

The upper and lower wing parts have now been joined with the wheel well trapped in between. I have decided not to sand back the rear 60% of the primer as it has left enough of the " rivets " showing through, and I will not apply the Zinc Chromate Yellow yet as I have still to decide on the final finish ( see my recent post in " chat " ). I have attempted the give the wheel well a slightly scruffy look to depict the rough overpainting which took place on these aircraft, and as the central wall with the piping comes with the inner doors, these and will be added later. Unfortunately the landing light has to be fitted at this stage and I'm not taking any bets on wether I knock it off before the finish!

 

I have now sprayed the fuselage walls with Tamiya Nato Black and the various panels will be picked out with Semi Gloss Black to give some variation. I was about to spray the port side console when I had an idea, I haphazardly dabbed on some of the thinned Nato Black trying to leave some Interior Green showing through, particularly at the edges of panels. I'll let you be the judges of wether it worked or not. I'm still looking for something to use for the elevator trim wheel but failing that, it ( and the other two ) will also be picked out in Semi Gloss Black. Also on the port side the throttle quadrant is seriously undersized and needs to be replaced, so I will use the one supplied in the Eduard kit as a template. Having originally decided to paint the seat Interior Green, I recently read that some were delivered by some subcontractors painted in Dull Dark Green so this is what I have chosen, just to be different. If anyone can prove me wrong for this particular aircraft I will repaint it.

I have painted the fuselage fuel tank with neat Aeromaster Tyre Black, which I applied generously in the hope of getting a slightly textured finish, but all I got was a blotchy finish with some brush marks, never mind most of it won't be seen anyway when the fuselage is closed up. There is a small intake on the port lower nose which would indicate that the battery had been moved to the engine compartment, and replaced by the IFF set above the fuselage tank, so I will attempt to modify the battery when the time comes. Many Mustangs in Korea carried an extra radio set above the original one which was plainly visible behind the seat armour even with the canopy closed, but I cannot see any evidence of this on my chosen aircraft so that will save me some time.

Finally for this update, the instrument panel. I have removed the raised detail from the kit IP and placed the Yahu panel on it, which despite my earlier reservations fitted quite well. It is narrower at the top than the kit panel, leaving two recessed areas which I might fill with black painted Plasticard depending on how much can be seen with the glare shield fitted above it. above it.

 Sorry about the quality of the photos, I can only use my Ipad for uploading pictures to Flickr at the moment rather than a proper camera.

That's it for now folks,I hope to have more soon. Any comments/suggestions/criticisms welcome.

 

John

 

[Hewy]

Nicley filled wings john,  looking most promising,   🤔 i wonder if its too late to use yours as an example on my abomination 😋.

 

[Biggles87]

You might have noticed that I have changed the title of this build slightly, this is because of recent photographic evidence found for me by @Smudge. The Superscale sheet I intended to use has the nose title spelt with one "O" which I thought was the American spelling and on the port side only, but I now know that it was also displayed on the starboard side and spelt " Was that TOO fast ". The Tamiya F-51 boxing has these markings, so I put in a request in the "wanted" section to anyone with the required decals to spare and had an immediately response from @Wez who has kindly sent me the whole sheet! I hope I'll be able to 'pay it forward' to someone soon.

More progress in the cockpit area.

The radio rack and  radio have been added, and some panels painted black on the starboard sidewall and detailed with some spots of colour to break up the monochrome effect a little. I found fitting the port console surprisingly fiddly, because the locating points are not as positive as those for the fuselage halves and the part did not snap into place as expected. I think a better method would have been to fit the part before painting, draw an outline on the fuselage, then remove the console and mask the whole area rather than just the contact points.

Next I attached the fuselage radiator outlet which is not as comprehensive as on the Airfix and Eduard kits, consisting of just the rear radiator face and the roof of the outlet. There should be some strakes on the outlet roof which are missing on this kit and although they will not easily be seen with the outlet flap in place, I will probably represent them with some Plasticard strips depending on how long it takes me to complete the airframe.Sorry for the photos but black on grey is not the easiest to capture, I tried outdoors in the sunlight but that just washed out the colours. 

I fitted the seat back to it's mounting and then the seat pan, breaking off one of the side supports in the process so I removed the other one, and have replaced them both with perforated strips left over from an old etched cockpit set, as they were over scale. I have also made a seat back cushion from laminated Plasticard, and added seat bels from an Eduard USAAF set.

Some more general pictures of the seat/floor/instrument panel before it gets sandwiched between the fuselage halves.

That's it for now, I have some small fuselage sub-assemblies completed, but they can wait until I join the main fuselage halves, which will hopefully be over the weekend.

 

John  

[Wez]

John,

 

You're welcome to the decals, looking forward to watching this come to fruition.  Good work so far!

 

Wez

[Biggles87]

I have finally joined the fuselage halves, the area around the instrument panel is a particularly snug fit because I did not thin the kit panel sufficiently before adding the Yahu one, which is quite thick making the whole thing fit tightly against the oxygen regulator on the right and the tank/bomb release controls on the left. You can also see below the panels/sub-assemblies which need to be added to complete the fuselage. Having test fitted these parts before joining the fuselage I have decided that I will get a better fit if I remove or modify some of the " snap fit " elements, unfortunately I didn't remove enough from the section which contains the tail wheel assembly so when I couldn't resist test fitted it again after joining the fuselage I couldn't remove it without splitting seams, my original plan had been not to fit it until the last minute before painting, so it will have to remain in place with something to protect the tailwheel fork, which is just the sort of thing I'm likely to knock off.

The radiator intake area, shown bottom right comes in four parts( three shown ) with just a plain shape representing the matrix, my original idea was to find a suitable piece of etch to represent it, but it is quite far back down the trunking and not much detail will be visible so I have painted it Nato Black and will leave it at that.The outlet flap comes in the open position as part of the assembly, but if you choose to show it closed it can be cut off and replaced by the separate part supplied on the sprue, I will leave it open as most Mustang photos I have seen show it at least partly open.

 The gun muzzle inserts and the ailerons have been added to the wings but not the flaps as they have a slightly different finish to them, but more of that later. I will need to do some filling and sanding around the muzzle inserts as there is a slight step between them and the wings, which is my fault as the wing leading edges were not closed completely when I joined the wings. My original plan was to leave the wings off and paint them before attaching to the fuselage but  having recently come to the conclusion that this particular aircraft was painted overall in metallic grey rather than NMF finish fuselage with silver lacquered wings, they can be attached as normal and everything painted together. The pylons have been added to the undersides, trust me they are there' and  I have joined the drop tank halves, the ones supplied are the 75 gallon type and although both sizes were used in Korea, I think the 115 gallon type was more common, so I will search my spares box to see if I can find any.

Finally,  I have also discovered that despite my original opinion on the matter, this aircraft did carry the extra radio equipment behind the head armour, so this and the IFF box will be added later.  

That's it for now, hoping to have it actually looking like a Mustang, rather than a collection of bits in the next couple of days.

Feel free to comment.

 

John  

[Andwil]

Unusual parts breakdown on this kit, I assume it’s to allow for different versions to be produced from the basic moulds.

 

AW

[Biggles87]

Hi AW,

Yes the breakdown is a little unusual, if not over -engineered in some places, but I cannot see how it would necessarily lead to other versions, for example the insert in the upper fuselage between cockpit and fin seems to serve no purpose other than to increase the parts count. The other thing that perplexes me is the addition of the lower wing leading edges to the undernose panel, something which the latest Airfix and Eduard Mustangs also have. If they were planning a ‘B’ version with the different leading edge angle at the roots then surely they would have to change the upper wings accordingly, not to mention the gun access panels etc.

It is however a nice kit, but I would certainly recommend the removal of the ‘ snap fit’ elements to anyone building one because the way they are arranged means you have to follow a strict sequence of events, and we all know that we ‘ experienced’ modellers like to deviate from the instructions when possible.

 

John

 

[Alan P]

Good build John! Nice work on the wings. Good idea to use Mr Surfacer 500, which fills seams without obliterating them. Will try that with the 1/32, was going to use Halfords Filler Primer (the yellow one) but for whatever reason didn't think of MS500...

 

Alan

[Biggles87]

I have glued the IP glare shield and gunsight followed by the  longer upper nose pieces, having first removed most of the attachment points provided, to give more ' wriggle room ' for attaching the rear piece and eventually a closer fit. My usual practice is to attach the tailplanes, if they are flat, before the wings as I think you get a better reference that way for getting the dihedral symmetrical, so this is what I've done here.

 

Lastly, the wings have been joined to the fuselage.

There are a couple of tongues on the fuselage which fit into corresponding slots on the lower wings and after test fitting I found that by just applying glue to these I could get a secure fit without using glue between the wings/fillets and risking squeezing it out over the surface and having to start sanding again. I have applied Tamiya Extra Thin from below to the accessible areas of the join for some extra reinforcement before adding the under nose panel and radiator intake assemblies, which should lock the whole thing in.  

 

I'm pleased with the fit at the wing root, it's one of the best I've had. I think it's gradually beginning to look like a Mustang

That's all for now

 

John  

 

Edit: I've just noticed that I have removed the starboard aileron during the wing fitting, Rats!! I hope it's on the workbench and not on the floor.

[Hewy]

I've  been sidetracked  john ,this meng kit looks to be a good one ,you're  doing it justice,the cockpit looks ace 👍

[Biggles87]

Thanks Hewy.

The masses of pinhole ‘ rivets ‘ particularly on the wings put me off a little at first, but they turned out to be quite easy to fill with my mixture of Mr Surfacer and acrylic primer. The cockpit is OK if you don’t look too closely, the biggest problems being the lack of definition on the elevator trim wheel and the seriously undersized and flat throttle quadrant, which I now realise I have not done anything about. Hopefully there will still be time.

The big plus has been the wing to fuselage joint which is just superb and probably would be fine without any glue at all once the two remaining fuselage parts are in place.

 

Cheers

 

John

[Biggles87]

Last major fuselage pieces added, the carburettor intake under the nose was probably the worst fit on the kit ( apart from the gun muzzle inserts ), partly because I did not remove the sprue gate correctly on one side and left myself a little gap to fill. The sprue attachments, like on many modern kits, continue ' behind ' the part, and can be difficult to remove accurately on smaller parts, I find.

Next, I decided to stick the aileron back on, only to find that I had also removed the rear part of the wing tip along with it, so I stood up to get some plasticard to make a new one and CRUNCH! I'd trodden on the windscreen which I had somehow swept off the bench onto the floor without realising. Aargh! You can also see just how bad the wing leading edge insert is here, but I think it was largely down to me.

From what I've read  Meng are not the best for their after sales or parts replacement service, and I don't think I would be happy to receive anything from China or thereabouts at the moment anyway. I am going to try the windscreen from my Eduard P-5i in the hope that as it's the same aeroplane in the same scale I might be lucky, if not I'm not sure what the next step will be. I really don't want to give up on this now, if anyone has any suggestions I'll be glad to hear them.

 

Bye for now.

 

John 

 

[Hewy]

Darn it john  , how about glueing it back together and create a model saving tarp to drape over the screen,(us flag  decal on some  pva tissue would work ) if the eduard one dont fit ?

[Biggles87]

IThat’s a good idea, but I’m hoping that the Eduard one will fit. I’ve taken some measurements but havn't, separated it from the sprue yet, I don’t want to drop it and tread on it!

[Biggles87]

The Eduard windscreen fitted perfectly, which is more than can be said of the panel ahead of it!

  And so now to the part we all love, filling and sanding. Fortunately, apart from the small hole in the side of the nose intake, and the step around the gun barrel inserts, ( in both cases due to me ) it's mostly a case of brushing some Mr Surfacer 500 along a few panel joins, then after sanding, the fuselage will be sprayed with Halfords grey acrylic primer to match the wings

  Meng provide two canopies, so having decided which one was appropriate for this aircraft I masked the other  ( Dallas ) canopy and tacked it in place with PVA to protect the cockpit interior during spraying, and for the wheel wells I used the ' wheels up ' closed inner doors and moist tissue for the outer portions. I decided not to mask off or try to protect the tailwheel as I would probably  break it off while removing it.

 Fuselage now primed and ready for a coat of metallic grey, and as you can see I've knocked off the rear wing tip again, rats! My ' handle ' by the way, is an old Swann Morten scalpel handle tightened over the propeller shaft which was wrapped with masking tape to increase it's diameter to fit the handle.

The weather has turned wet again here and the humidity in my ' man-cave ' has risen to 70% so no airbrushing for a couple of days unfortunately, so I'll concentrate on other things like the propeller. There are two sets of propeller blades in the Meng kit, Hamilton Standard cuffed and Aeroproducts, neither of which is suitable for this particular aircraft which used the Hamilton Standard uncuffed paddle blade type. Luckily I have a set of Eduard  Overtrees  which provides all three types and I have borrowed the ones I need from this.

More soon I hope.

 

John  

[Pappy]

Nice save John,

 

cheers,

 

Pappy

[Wez]

Well done John, glad it worked for you, looking forward to the outcome.

[Biggles87]

Thanks guys.

 My logic told me that as they were models of the same aeroplane in the same scale they should be interchangeable, but I was still slightly surprised when it worked. 😀