1/72 LF Models Consolidated P-30/PB-2 Fighter

[TheRealMrEd]

Hello, mes ami!   It is once again into the breach!

 

This time with an LF Models 1/72 resin rendition of the Consolidated P-30/PB-2.  Consolidated Aircraft, is the company that would eventually give us the famous delta-winged bombers and fighters of the '50s and '60s.  Actually the whole lineage of this aircraft was started by what was actually at the time, the precursor of the Lockheed Aircraft Company.  Rather than repeat the whole story here, I would refer you instead to the Wikipedia article  HERE

 

I will however, directly quote from the article to state the reason why this rather forlorn looking aircraft was actually important in the greater scheme of things:  "The P-30 is significant for being the first fighter in United States Army Air Corps service to have retractable landing gear, an enclosed and heated cockpit for the pilot, and an exhaust-driven turbo-supercharger for altitude operation."

 

You will note the heated cockpit for the PILOT  -- even back then, the G.I.B. was of passing concern...

 

On to the somewhat rare-ish LF kit.  Like most of their kits that I have built, the molding are usually quite sharp, and the directions are quite poor.  No exception here!  I can certainly understand difficulties with language barriers, but line drawings, particularly more-or-less technical ones, are universal.  Unless of course, they were done by your third cousin's ugly step-brother or whomever.  While most items are referenced, few explicit details are given, and one must pore over the relatively few photos that can be found, none of which include complete views of the entire cockpit area.  But, I digress...

 

The kit looks like so:

 

 

The inner fuselage halves have reasonable sidewall detail for the era, and the usual PE seats and belts are fine.  The decals look great, and the instructions, at least, are not overly Xeroxed (photocopied to you youngsters) unto the death.  One other shortcoming of the instructions is that there are no drawings, showing the parts still on the resin sprues or pour gates.  More on this later.

 

Most builds begin with the cockpit, as the first thing on the list to be done before joining the fuselage halves.  In this case, I won't show much of that, because the lack of clear indications of where exactly to place the pilots floorboard, etc. are not to be had.  The instrument panel and pilot's floor I think I eventually figured out; the gunner's floorboard, while it has been installed, I do not know whether it should, in fact, be further forward. 

 

Therefore, the first thing I WILL mention is the little intake at the lower front of the fuselage, where what looks like a radiator, a little circular circle thingy and a resin piece with a hole in it (supposedly positioned where air coming thru the hole would flow into the circular thingy) should be positioned:

 

 

Shown above, the little part with the hole (B) should be aligned flush with the front face of the intake lip, on the starboard side of the fuselage (left arrow).  The part with the radiator and the circular cooler "thingy" are inset further back from the lip of the intake on the left fuselage half, so that the "A" part in back aligns with the "B" part in front.  I hope that this is clearer than the instructions, but oh well...

 

Next up on the list of confusion is the assembly of the gunners seat, floorboard and "tilt" mechanism?:

 

 

Above, the arrow point to the actual seat itself. part "Z" is the gunner's floorboard, parts "X" are two little PE "U"-shaped parts stuck to the back of the seat, one above the other.  Parts "Y" are two pieces of the wire supplied in the kit that you are to cut to the length of your choice, and then bend to the curvature of your choice, and attach more-or-less as shown above.  There is another piece of the wire that is laid side-to-side across the width of the seat at the very bottom in back, that anchors the two bent wire parts.  Sorry that I neglected to highlight this, but it can be seen in the photo and IS shown in the kit instructions.  My main problem here is that I could find ZERO photographs depicting this seat, and what can be seem from available outside shots of the aircraft don't seem to look anything like this!  Dealer's choice, I suppose.

 

Next, a view showing the I.P. and pilots section installed, and a different view of the gunner's seat, which in the combat of figuring out all of the above, has lost it's aluminum paint on the upper part of the seat.  Have to fix that, I suppose:

 

 

Above right, another view of the intake, as the fuse halves are glued together.

 

Next, the bugaboo of all resin and vacuform kits -- necessary sanding.  In this case, it is the three parts that comprise the turbo-supercharger and it's various fairings:

 

 

Above, the un-started front fairing, then the backside of the turbo-charger -- partially sanded, and finally, on the right, the finished rear turbo fairing. All these items have to be sanded free of their resin pour blocks, or "thinned" if you will.  The hardest part is sanding these things flat and even.  As you can see from the arrow on the middle item, I still have a slight taper on the on the pour block that needs removal, as it is now thicker on the left side than on the right.  You just have to keep sanding until the pour block becomes mere "flash", which can be cleanly snapped off.  The best method I have found after all these years, is still the old sticky tape method wherein the tape has to be changed out, seemingly every few seconds!

 

Oh, and did I mention, you stll have to sand a bit fore-and-aft as well as up-and-down, to fit various fuselage curves....?

 

Below, lots to be seen in the next photo:

 

 

First off, the turbo-charger parts. The leading fairing should be installed just behind the cowl join line, and hard against the exhaust part at it's top.  I then held the actual turbine part into place temporarily, so I could align the rear fairing to fit tightly and properly.  This was so the turbo could be removed and painted silver before final installation.  I'm fairly certain that the two fairings will be painted blue, but I'm waiting, hoping to find a picture of this aircraft with markings for the 94th Fighter Squadron, the famed "Hat-In-The-Ring" 94th Aero Squadron of WW I fame.

 

  Part "A" is an upper cockpit panel that is installed closely behind the pilot's seat, with the cut-out nearer to the front than rear.  This part will eventually have a rather prominent "roll bar" looking thing installed on it's top,  not mentioned nor shown in the instructions, but rather obvious from other photos.  Sometimes, the roll bar had some sort of fairing enclosing it, perhaps an early version of pilot's armor plating?  It couldn't have helped rearward visibility for a fighter, but what the heck the heck, we got a G.I.B., don't we?

 

"S" above shows my choice of location for the gunner's seat.  It possibly might need to be more forward, or even tilted back more, but I have no way of knowing.  Lastly, the "tail feathers" have been installed.

 

Well, enough self-torture for now.  I'll be back with more, when I gather the courage!

 

Ed

[TheRealMrEd]

Back again, with more resin mayhem...

 

Next, prepping the wings for assembly.  I started with painting the wheel wells and underside of the upper wing, aluminum:

 

 

 

 

Above, the wings are assembled to the center section, using CA.

 

Below, the reason for painting the top side of the center section aluminum:
 

 

Above right.  Unfortunately, i forgot to take a picture of the areas that I had to sand to get the wing assembly to fit the fuselage.  The fuselage was too wide or the gap between the wings was too narrow.  Anyway, I had to sand the inner edge of the upper wings, and the outer edges of the wing join area of the fuselage, to squeeze everything together.  In addition, the wing tailing edge was too thick, and that all had to be sanded thinner.  The end result, when I finally got it all more or less fitter, was a gap at the front of the wing (here, a sizeable chunk was missing from both fuselage halves), and the nice radius at the rear wing/fuse join was missing.  After the thinning process, there was also a slight height difference between the top of the wing and the fuselage, all of which must be addresses by filling and sanding.

 

So, some tape was applied both above and below the join, to help keep filler off of other areas.  Normally, in a tight spot I would use a water-spreadable white filler, but the amount of fill and damage here was too great, so back to the Bondo Spot Filler putty:

 

 

Above right, the underside was by far the worst problem, particularly all the missing resin at the front join.  After drying, and some sanding, it's looking a little better:

 

 

A little more spot putty, and some Mr Surfacer 500 to check the sanded joint, and we're starting to see some progress:

 

 

While all this was going on, some Durham's Rock Hard Water Putty was used to create a new vacu-forming canopy master, just in case, as only one canopy copy is included with the kit:

 

 

Above right, the kit canopy is separated from the new master, using the tip of a #11 blade.  Notice the the rear corner of the master is missing.  This is because the Durham's really isn't rock hard!  Therefore, it behooves one to (A) pry gently, and (B) pry in an area of the mold that isn't critical, in this case the waste behind the gunner's canopy, at the rear end.

 

Next up, to replicate a couple of the pieces that were missing from my kit.  Here, let me hasten to say that I doubt that this was due to error from the kit manufacturer.  I bought this kit off E-Bay years ago, and they were  probably lost by either myself or some earlier owner.  In any event, the little gizmo on the side of the fuse was missing, and I can't remember what it is for, perhaps some sort of early airspeed indicator?

 

I actually found that the P-26 also used these, the but ones in my stash are slated for eventually being built  -- "good Lord willin' and the creek don't rise"! 

 

I first tried chucking up a piece of plastic rod into a micro bit holder in a small electric drill, to sand out the center section, but the plastic rod kept breaking.  Next, I tried the same thing wing a piece of plastic coated wire, but the plastic is of the wrong type, and wouldn't co-operate.  Eventually, I just grabbed a chunk of rod (stretched sprue would do as well) and a triangular-shaped file, and did it by hand:

 

 

Below, the newly-created piece is installed on the fuselage.  Also shown is a dry fit of the canopy after trimming and sanding to shape:

 

 

This finally shows that indeed, I installed the gunner's seat platform and seat too far rearward.  I should really be more forward about a quarter inch/6mm.  I had toyed with the idea of forming another canopy to depict the model with the pilot's canopy slid back and the gunner's canopy tilted forward, but it now seeks like the last thing I need to do is draw much more attention to this issue!

 

Looks like my new motto should be "I'll make the errors, so that you don't have to"...

 

In any event, there are more things to build before the canopy can be installed, so see you next time.

 

Ed

Edited May 25, 2021 by TheRealMrEd
Hit the wrong button before the post was finished!

[gingerbob]

Between the wars monoplane, you mean!  (one of the tags)

 

This does look like some combat involved, but I'm looking forward to watching!

 

bob

 

 

[TheRealMrEd]

Just so, Bob!  Thanks for looking in...

 

Ed

[TheRealMrEd]

Among the other items missing, was the gunner's  machine gun mount.  Try as I might, I could find no clear pictures of this area on the real thing, so I just decided to make one reminiscent of the one used on the SBD, etc..  I started with a short length of plastic rod, and held it over a metal screwdriver, so that heat from a small candle would cause it to deform and bend over the driver's circumference. I added a small punched-out disc of plastic card, using  liquid cement.  The diameter of the partial ring  was purposely left a bit large, so that it would have a slight "springy" feel when installed into the rear fuselage, to help hold it into place while adding a drop of glue.  Obeying Murphy's Law, of course it flew off into space a couple of times!:

 

 

Above right, did the best I could on the install, given that the seat is to far rearward.

 

Next up is the roll cage.  I measured the depth of the kit canopy at sill level, and made the quadruped roll bar assembly as shown.  It ended up about 6.5 mm high, with the legs anchored  the same distance as the four little dimples molded into the flat sill panel that I had installed earlier, assuming that they were spaced correctly.  You know what they say about assume....

 

 

My the time I sanded everything to now fit under the canopy, it was no longer an uneven pyramid, but it's what I've got.  If I were to do this over, I would make the entire assembly only 5mm tall, and move the rear legs forward, to just behind the large cut-out hole in the deck, and use a slightly smaller sized rod or sprue piece.  Anyway, I installed the canopy atop the rig, after a coat of silver paint.  I used G-G watch cement for ease of smoothing later, and removal with alcohol if needed.  Also, the particular aircraft that I decided to model had it's front gun troughs filled over, so you can the the Bondo Spot Putty there.

 

After the G-S dried, I decided the gap at the front between the canopy windscreen and the fuselage was too great to use just more G-S cement to fill, so out came more putty, after using some masking tape to protect the windscreen:

 

 

Above right, after sanding, some Mr Surfacer 500 thick primer, and more sanding, it's starting to look the part.  I really detest large gaps at the windscreen, unless they are supposed to be there, which is very seldom!

 

Next, starting to think about the paint!  Below, the wheel wells are masked with some chunks of hobby foam:

 

 

Above right, the canopy is masked using a combination of Tamiya Tape, some vinyl tape, some paper towel, some Parafim "M" as well as a dab or two of Micro Mask from Microscale.  As you can see, I don't just use one technique for masking canopies -- I use everything but the kitchen sink!

 

Next the upper wings and the area around the canopy are loosely masked to prevent vast over-spray of the blue I'm using to paint the aircraft fuselage:

 

 

Above right, while normally, I would shoot an under layer of the correct color for the inside of the canopy (in this case, aluminum), here I am directly spraying the top color only.  This is to not build up the paint too much, nor to have to fight an undercoat layer later on, if I should have to strip and refinish some or all of the canopy by hand.  Just in case...

 

The shade of color that I use for the lighter blue used on between-the-wars U.S.A.A.C. aircraft, is this old standby from Testor's, also, like me, now going defunct.  Of course, I grabbed a few bottles for my own stash first.....heh...heh..:

 

 

Here I will mention that while I normally paint the entire aircraft with a prime coat, and then each needed color, I deviated here by shooting the canopy first, for stated reasons.  When dry, I will then mask the entire canopy area as one, then the prime the rest of the aircraft.  Then, I will paint the needed yellow on the wings and empennage, and then mask the wings and tail feathers when dry, and shoot the rest of the needed blue on the fuselage.  This is because, in my little beady brain, I have decided it would be easier to mask the wings and empennage before shooting the blue, rather than the other way around.

 

See you again, after some time in the paint booth.

 

Ed

[TheRealMrEd]

Hello again.

 

After using Parafilm"M" to mask off everything but the parts that needed to be painted yellow, I painted the yellow with True North Chrome Yellow enamel.  Then I removed all but the overall canopy mask, re-masked the yellow, and painted the blue parts with the afore-mentioned Testor's Blue and it looks like so:

 

 

After  removing that  masking, except for the overall canopy masking, it looks like the picture above, right.

 

After eventually  removing ALL the canopy masking, it turns out that my hunch about not priming under the blue of the canopy frames was right on target.  I skipped some (arrow), and they are going to have to be touched up by brush.  Some of the basic decals have been applied, and here I discovered the worst thing about this kit, and it fall squarely at the feet of LF MODELS!  The red/white/blue decal for the rudder, that is provided in the kit is WAY too large, and if you try to trim it down, vertically to make it fit, you end up with the incorrect number of red and white lines on the rudder.  Now while this may seem a small thing to some, all the U.S. aircraft of the era that had these markings have exactly 13 horizontal stripes, with the topmost and bottom-most stripes being red, with white interspersed between.  These stripes stand for each of our original 13 colonies, and dammit, are NOT to be trifled with!

 

To try and solve the problem, I found a U.S. flag decal in the spares box, and cut it down to fit as well as possible, and using the cut-down blue portion (vertical stripe) from the kit decal, did my best.  Even after some brush touch-up

it looks so-so at best, and I wish I had decided to just mask and paint all this in the first place.  It's fairly simply, really, you just take the available height of the object, divide by fourteen, and that gives you the needed width of each of the 13 needed horizontal stripes  -- duh!  ARE YOU LISTENING, LF?

 

 

Above right, one of the item's missing (I can't for sure blame LF Models for this!) was the rear landing gear.  Fortunately, it is quite simple, and I was able to make up one using three punched-out plastic discs "B" (although I ended up using only two), glued together.  Then I punched out two smaller disks "A", one fore each side to represent the wheel hub, and a small piece of tiny music wire.  In the end, it turned out pretty well, shown here with the too-thin paint still wet:

 

 

Above, right, the issues with the main landing gear emerge.  Laying in front of the model, each consists of the wheel, a main gear leg, and a sort of "U"-shaped piece, with one leg a little longer than the other (long leg of the "U" goes toward the rear of the aircraft!).  Except for the wheel, which has a slight indentation that needs to be drilled both bigger and deeper, the joint at the "U" and main gear leg are just butt joints.  The resin used on the kit seems to break and crack when trying to drill into very thin parts, so I left the butt joint as is, using CA glue, and hoping it all holds up!

 

Another issue here, is that while the wing openings to accept the "U"-shaped gear parts "A" are there, they have to be enlarged and re-shaped like "B" above, on both sides...  I suppose that's why we call this "modeling" instead of "assembling"!  At this point, I'm not real sure than anyone from the company actually BUILT the kit, after it was cast.  To date, this is the worst LF kit I have built, but it's not fatally bad.

 

Anyway, here it sits on it's feet, at last:

 

 

Note the added (and black-washed) turbocharger, the pitot (spares box), and the antenna added to the canopy.  The black stripes were not included in the kit.  Also, the black "7" s were taken from the spares box, and the stripe and arrow of the 94th Pursuit Squadron (they changed to this emblem for a while, rather than the Hat and Ring that was also used in WWI).  Later the 94th just used the Hat and Ring in it's later units.  Also, the red and green color has been added to the wing-tip lights.

 

Rounding the final turn now, back soon!

 

Ed

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TheRealMrEd]

Deleted

Edited June 11, 2021 by TheRealMrEd
double post

[TheRealMrEd]

Hello, back once again.

 

Not much left to finish up.  Among the missing pieces was the prop hub, so I scrounged around and found an old 3-blader from an ancient MPC Douglas Dauntless that looked about right.  First I had to paint the back of the prop a rather dark maroon, which was the fashion of the time.  I found the formula on-line for mixing the maroon:

 

 

For the front of the prop, polished aluminum, along with some prop logos from the spares box.  In the B/W photos, they looked like Hamilton-Standard to me, so that's what I used.  The prop hub is regular aluminum.

 

Last, I tried to rig all the radio antenna.  I succeeded with the one from the tail to the cockpit mask, but not the wing-to-mast ones, as they just didn't want to stay glued when I tried to tension them to the mast.  After three of four tries, I finally decided to call it a day.  However, in my photos, you can barely see the one I did, just as you can barely see the ones in real photos, so I don't feel too bad!

 

There wasn't much wear and tear from this era, as budget cuts made even flying occasional, and the only grunge I noted in real photos was a little mud splattered back from the wheels. Anyway, she's done, and here's the teaser pic:

 

 

It was a build with a few issues, most of my own creation, but as they say, I "got 'er done".

 

Gotta go help my son move some furniture, so I'll post up a few pics over in RFI lHERE

 

See you next build,

 

Ed

Edited June 12, 2021 by TheRealMrEd
added link

[billn53]

Very nice! 

[TheRealMrEd]

Thanks billn53.  Appreciate it!

 

Ed

[2996 Victor]

Hi Ed,

 

bit of a blast from the past here, but I've just read through the build thread and wanted to say that this is a little cracker! The blue/yellow scheme is stunning. Incidentally, was the prop-blade maroon recipe easy to find?

 

Great stuff as always!

 

Cheers,

Mark

[TheRealMrEd]

On 4/3/2023 at 12:04 PM, 2996 Victor said:

Hi Ed,

 

bit of a blast from the past here, but I've just read through the build thread and wanted to say that this is a little cracker! The blue/yellow scheme is stunning. Incidentally, was the prop-blade maroon recipe easy to find?

 

Great stuff as always!

 

Cheers,

Mark

Hi Mark, that's a great question.  Sorry that I didn't describe how I got there myself, but just overlooked it, I guess.  Just did some research on-line, and found that that I had made a mistake --  on the back of the silver props, the maroon color began 18-24 inches from the prop hub, NOT all the way to the hub!

 

There are several recipes for maroon, and I'm not sure which one is really best.  The correct color for the USAAC is Maroon 18, but I could find no direct mixing instructions.  The most common is to start with blue and red, about 15:1 ratio, and work from there.  We are fighting hue, shade, tone, and just about everything else.  Some people start with red and dark green, others with red and dark brown, in various quantities.  One person even used more or less the same amount of red, blue, and yellow, supposedly.  There is  not a lot of color difference between maroon, burgundy, and plum, when you get right down to it, so, easy does it.  I would start with the red and blue, and just fiddle until you find out a shade you like.  I never took an art class in high school (I took drafting!), so a color wheel is kind of foreign to me.  My kids are all artist capable and they help me out from time to time...

 

A color chip is shown Here, along with one Vallejo recommendaiton...

 

Ed

Edited April 4, 2023 by TheRealMrEd
posted wrong link

[2996 Victor]

10 hours ago, TheRealMrEd said:

Hi Mark, that's a great question.  Sorry that I didn't describe how I got there myself, but just overlooked it, I guess.  Just did some research on-line, and found that that I had made a mistake --  on the back of the silver props, the maroon color began 18-24 inches from the prop hub, NOT all the way to the hub!

 

There are several recipes for maroon, and I'm not sure which one is really best.  The correct color for the USAAC is Maroon 18, but I could find no direct mixing instructions.  The most common is to start with blue and red, about 15:1 ratio, and work from there.  We are fighting hue, shade, tone, and just about everything else.  Some people start with red and dark green, others with red and dark brown, in various quantities.  One person even used more or less the same amount of red, blue, and yellow, supposedly.  There is  not a lot of color difference between maroon, burgundy, and plum, when you get right down to it, so, easy does it.  I would start with the red and blue, and just fiddle until you find out a shade you like.  I never took an art class in high school (I took drafting!), so a color wheel is kind of foreign to me.  My kids are all artist capable and they help me out from time to time...

 

A color chip is shown Here, along with one Vallejo recommendaiton...

 

Ed

Hi Ed,

many thanks for your post and the attached link - that's excellent info. Its a small aspect, something I didn't previously know but which is a distinctive characteristic of the period. The reason I asked is that I've picked up a 1/48 kit of the P-30/PB-2 by Sierra Scale Models, part vac, part injection (which will be a learning curve for me!) which I also want to finish in the blue/yellow scheme.

Many thanks once again and kind regards,

Mark