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Over-paid & over here - 453rd Museum P-38 Lightning; a build for recovery


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Nice to hear those Yanks visiting where their forefathers did heroism. :) Can only imagine how that would feel, to come over and see where it happened. Hats of to those young men (and women) serving so many years ago.

I read an article years ago, about a P-51 pilot that had his plane shot up and bailed out, over my county in Sweden. Sadly his parachute failed to open and he did not make it. Many decades later his sisyer, iirc, visited the place and got to see parts of his plane. Heartbreaking and made me cry. But she was so thankful for all the info and getting to visiti the place.

And in my hometown there is a couple of graves of British and Canadian crew picked up from the kattegat. Several of them under 20 years of age. Visited their graves a few times and looked at the beautiful headstones to pay my respects to those young men giving their lives so we can live in freedom..

 

Anyways. Nice to see this thread and the wodnerful models being made.

I hope you recovred nciely from your ordeal too! Being in the medical field I kinda know what you went through.. Hope you is well.

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18 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

I am growing to love these Tamiya lacquers

If they are like the MRP lacquers I started using a year or so ago, then I know what you mean. I must try the Tamiya versions. 

 

The P-38 is coming along swell .......... thought I'd get into the American phraseology for this one!

 

Terry

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Looking terrific, I'm sold on the HGW rivet decals. Nice and subtle, just how they should be. Tamiya lacquers are superb, the flat aluminium is particularly good with a a much finer grain texture than I'm used to.

 

Richie

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After a coat of Worn Effects Fluid (basically bottled hairspray), the first layer of paint to be layered.  Only a small amount of this will be visible on the final finish, but it’s vital to the whole look:

51155998201_21da95052f_b.jpg

 

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Hi guys with all the super turbo charger talk earlier I thought I would put this link out there for anybody interested.

 

 

Greg's channel is great in general for lots of in depth discussion on the performance of WWII aircraft, his series on the P47 in particular stands out.

 

Anyways, awesome looking build. Threads like this are an amazing source of ideas and knowledge for people like me who are just getting back into modeling, so thank you for posting.

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Oooh, chipping eh? Impressive…

 

Of course there will be pressure for muddy boot marks now :D 

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Great progress. Really interested to see how you approach the hair spray method. I tried it on a Defiant and it didn't work out so still on a learning curve with that approach.

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Phase 1: chromate (Tamiya acrylic) over metal (Tamiya lacquer):

51159042570_cdfd324c58_b.jpg 51157932231_f13c320fc9_b.jpg

 

Most of this will be obscured by the USAAF Olive Drab topcoat, but so far I’m happy.

 

More soon - probably painting the underside, so this gets a proper chance to cure completely.

 

Crisp

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Brush & water, with the work done relatively early before the chromate coat had cured too hard.  I do sometimes use tooth picks as well - and may yet do so during the next stage - but this time it wasn’t necessary.

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This is shaping up very nicely. Bookmarking for inspiration, I've got the Academy P-38M in the stash.

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On 5/4/2021 at 6:06 AM, R_harrison said:

Hi guys with all the super turbo charger talk earlier I thought I would put this link out there for anybody interested.

 

 

Greg's channel is great in general for lots of in depth discussion on the performance of WWII aircraft, his series on the P47 in particular stands out.

 

Anyways, awesome looking build. Threads like this are an amazing source of ideas and knowledge for people like me who are just getting back into modeling, so thank you for posting.

He´s fantastic. Was surprised about the drop tanks vid in particular. About the P-47 actually having the range etc..  Pretty cool. :)

 

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Apart from undercarriage and air screws (& permanent fitting of turbos), everything is now fitted to the airframe (including mass balances on each side of the elevator and assorted oil cooler inlets on either side of the cowlings)… and it’s all had a unifying light coat of Tamiya lacquer matt aluminium (apart from the upper wing roots, of course), so she’s ready for paint!

 

From above:

51159022502_bd7c6937d6_b.jpg

 

…and from below:

51159685901_2497690cc1_b.jpg

 

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Looks like the rivets survived the process Crisp, good progress, (a lot further than mine)...I'll be tackling the finish a bit differently (black basing and marbling) but basically the same procedure for the inner wings as that seems to be the most abused area. There are so many online builds of this kit, we're spoilt for choice when it comes to weathering options and techniques.  Tally-bally-ho...

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Great build so far. Am watching carefully as I just got this kit for £47 on Amazon last week.might consider using the Tamiya lacquer aluminium for this... love the weathering approach !

 

glad you are feeling better too!

 

Regards, Andy

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1 hour ago, general melchett said:

Looks like the rivets survived the process Crisp, good progress, (a lot further than mine)...I'll be tackling the finish a bit differently (black basing and marbling) but basically the same procedure for the inner wings as that seems to be the most abused area. There are so many online builds of this kit, we're spoilt for choice when it comes to weathering options and techniques.  Tally-bally-ho...

I am normally a committed black-baser, but since this is a build where I am deliberately outside my comfort zone, I thought I’d try something else…

 

The 2 P-51s are both natural metal, so definitely black basing for them 

 

Yes, the rivets seem to have survived well enough, so far at least!

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Progress… after a nasty moment.  The Tamiya instructions specify AS-7 Neutral Gray (rattle can) for the USAAF Neutral Gray undersides.  So I obtained a can and carefully decanted it to a bottle; I don’t like the lack of precision/control from rattle cans.

 

Today I prepared to airbrush the base coat of the underside, and without thinking thinned it with bog standard Tamiya thinners.  Disaster; the paint rapidly turned to horrible sludge - I managed one test squirt onto a piece of paper (luckily nothing onto the actual model!) before the whole thing clogged up. 
 

20 minutes later I’d cleaned my airbrush and just about stopped swearing.  I’m all for being outside my comfort zone, but this came close to a horrible mess on my model, so I reverted to what I should have done all along: trusting iModelKit. 
 

5 minutes of working with the excellent mixer part of the app and I had 4:1 XF-75 (IJN Grey Kure Arsenal) : XF-77 (IJN Grey Sasebo), which is definitely close enough, especially for a base coat!

51162983670_91791249ea_b.jpg

 

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Close call there Crisp, we've all had those moments, always test before committing to plastic, I remember vividly finishing an S&M Avro Ashton for a magazine and picking up, what I thought was  an airbrush loaded with semi-matt varnish that turned out to be Dark Sea Grey, one blast across the wings showed me the error of my ways. To say the air was blue is an understatement! 

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That hairspray job is superb, need to do some experimenting one day.

55 minutes ago, general melchett said:

Close call there Crisp, we've all had those moments, always test before committing to plastic, I remember vividly finishing an S&M Avro Ashton for a magazine and picking up, what I thought was  an airbrush loaded with semi-matt varnish that turned out to be Dark Sea Grey, one blast across the wings showed me the error of my ways. To say the air was blue is an understatement! 

I did the same with some primer! The swear box had a boost that day!

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Glad you didn't hit the model with the gunky paint, Crisp - the underside grey looks very smooth :clap:

 

I've only tried decanted gloss paint from Tamiya rattle cans, and I almost always airbrushed them un-thinned - sometimes with a tiny drop of cellulose thinner. Never had a problem with those. HTH

 

Ciao 

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