Didn't see any build threads so I figured I'd start one and see if there's any interest.  Just started this P-51D earlier this week.  It's a kit I picked up several years ago from hobby lobby during their half-off sale.  Trying to knock a couple out from the shelf before i buy any more kits.

This will be my first Airfix kit. Overall, right now, I'd rate it as OK.  Decals I've used so far have been good. There are some fit issues I'll go over if anybody is interested.

Not going to do step by step but will update progress as I go.  Let me know your thoughts/critiques or if you have any questions.

Sorry for the crappy pics.  Just snapping them as I go on my cell.

Day one



Where I was this afternoon

Lookin good!

Only had a few hours today to work on the mustang.  Was hoping to be priming and prepping for paint but ran into more fit issues.  

Got the fuselage halves joined, puttied the seams and re-scribed the lost panel lines  The wing pieces went together beautifully.  However, the wing to fuselage fit was crap.  So, I spent my time cutting styrene shims and filing.  Got it lined up, level and tightened up.

That airfix P-51 has nice fit.  
The ones I built when I was younger back in the 70s and 80s always had warped fuselages and sometimes the wings too.   But they had a wide range of subjects in 1/72

The fit on this one isn't as bad as some of the old Revell / Monogram kits of the past.  But it isn't a Tamiya kit, that's for sure.  I've had to put in some work to get stuff fitting correctly.

I built a model of the Star Trek (TOS) Enterprise that absolutely was the worst fitting model kit when I was in 5th or 6th grade in the 70s. The saucer section was warped out of the box, and the nacelles weren't straight at all.

I've got a couple of 1/24 scale car models I want to build, but I want to do a good job, so I expect I need an airbrush and some practice (and make a spray booth).

Looking good!

Pulled the canopy out to get ready for priming and it had pretty bad defects in the main portion of the glass so I sanded and polished it.  It's just ever slightly cloudy though.  Debating on future dipping to clear it up but I'm not a fan.  Also ran styrene rod around the fuel tanks to make them more accurate.



Gluing and cleaning up everything else for priming.  Just waiting on tamiya tape to arrive for masking the canopy.  Should be here tomorrow.


Added the guns to the wing.  More filing needed for a good fit.  The kit comes with different canopies for different variants.  Using a spare here to mask the cockpit.


These fuel tank mounting pieces are just bigger than a cunt hair.  Took me a bit to get them situated.  Made me decide that was enough for tonight.

I hate priming all the little pieces.  Primed with gray stynlrez.


Started laying color.  Used Vallejo metal color dark aluminum for the fuse.  Dries quick and doesn't lift off with masking tape.  1st time spraying Vallejo.  Overall  pretty good but had a few spatters i had to buff out and respray.  

A little contrast.  Wings sprayed in aluminum.  Pretty happy with the finish.  Have a few spots to buff and re-spray.  Going to redo the wheel wells.  The original color was too dark.  Calling it a night.

Little bit more this afternoon.  The flash makes the colors look totally different than IRL.  Last picture is more representative of the actual contrasts.

Love / hate relationship with this Vallejo metal color.  Looks nice but it scratches if you look at it wrong.  Decided the original finish wasn't smooth enough so I buffed everything and re-painted the metal colors tonight.  Toned down the wing panel color too.  Took multiple passes and extreme care to get everything looking good.

Not touching it for 24 hours and am going to clear coat it tomorrow night.  Praying I don't blemish it before I get the clear on.

The wings look.....long.  

Maybe optical illusion?

Probably a combo of optical illusion and the other control surfaces aren't mounted yet.

😉

Getting a little done here and there.


Kit decals are laying down nice with microset and microsol.

Had to walk away for a few days after the right side insignia decal tore while laying it down.  Think I got it straightened out and hopefully won't be noticed once I clear the decals.

Masking up for letter markings.


Letters done.

Looking good so far.

The Tamiya kit from the '90s is currently one of my WIPs ready for painting. I haven't yet decided what I'm going to use to replicate NMF. The Vallejo Metal Color aluminum seems to look better than the Vallejo Air aluminum I have on-hand.

Couple of progress pics.  Have to touch up the black at the wheel well.  Had some tack-it blocking the paint. Not perfect but I guess the invasion stripes IRL weren't perfect either.  

The Vallejo metal colors look great but I'd recommend giving them several days to harden up and then shoot them with a clear coat.   Then, let that set for a day or two.  They seem to stay soft for a while.  I cleared with Tamiya x-22 and that toughen them up after a few days.

One more for tonight.  Tail stripes added.  Also cleared everything to lock in what I've got done so far.

Beautiful model and excellent thread! I'm dealing with scratched clear and colored plastic too. Just can't get that last bit of shine.

Cool.
I did one 1/48 Mustang for a guy who lived across the road from me about 8 years ago. He and his twin brother were both in the 3rd Air Commando group in the Philippines so I made it for him with his unit markings. Don't recall if it was Airfix or some other brand like Hasegawa or Tamiya but it was a good kit.
He and his brother were eventually stationed on Ie Shima, Okinawa.  I had an uncle who flew P-47's who was on that island then too with 413th GF, 1st FS.  He said it was a small island but had so many airplanes and guys on it you couldn't pitch a tent.

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Had to make a 1/48th of my uncle's plane too.

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Cleaned up the wing stripes.  Think I had one too many shiners when I taped them up the 1st time.

Those are freaking clean.  Great job!!

When I started building this kit, I was not digging the kit markings at all and was in a bit of a never-ending circle trying to decide what plane I was going to base the model on.  I spent several days looking at decal sheets that were available and just couldn't find something that interested me.  I almost accepted defeat and was going to proceed with the kit markings and started painting.

Then, one night, I was over in the Aviation forum and ran across a post from our very own @Andrapos asking for information about a P-51D that was flown by one of his family members.  I originally IM'd him just wanting to help dig up any information I could could find for him.  He quickly responded and let me know it was the WD-I marked Mustang in the below photo.  AAF Serial number 44-13564.



After IM'ing back and forth with information, I asked for permission to base my model on his family member's plane.  He graciously granted permission and I started down the rabbit hole of research.

In the above picture (mid 1944), the Mustang was with the 335th Fighter Squadron / 4th Fighter Group, marked WD-I and was piloted by Capt Donald D Perkins.  

Sometime later in 1944, the plane was transferred to the 358th Fighter Squadron / 355th Fighter Group, was re-lettered to YF-C and piloted by First Lt Edward F. Haraburda (Andrapos's family member pictured below).




The 358th FS / 355th FG in WWII was based in Steeple Morden, England.

First Lt. Edward F. Haraburda was shot down / KIA on November 20th, 1944 while strafing trains in Germany near Zulpich/Weisskirchen (S/W of Cologne).  His plane was hit by FLAK on a strafing run.  I'll leave it up to Andrapos to post any additional information if he choses.  Andrapos ended up having way more information than I could dig up online.

There is a 355th FG memorial in Steeple Morden, England which memorializes the 355th FG pilots lost during WWII and can be found HERE.  

First Lt Edward F. Haraburda is one of the pilots memorialized on the wall.



More to come soon.

Cool.  This is the stuff I love to see.
We had a guy on our island that was a gunner on B-24's in the 702'nd. Jimmy Stewart was his commander for part of the time he was there.
I had the historical group for the unit do an entire history for him with all his missions for the local library and his family. It mentions each plane and formation location for his missions. It had photos of many of the planes he was on and I cross referenced to the known unit lists of aircraft and dug up tons of old photos of unit AC from the net. I bought a 1/72 scale B-24J Hasegawa kit and some ad on detail parts but it's been sitting in the box for years now. We were going to put it in the library in the area they have coffee hour and a lot of vets go there for that. The problem is all the planes had Ford built noses and no B-24 kit in that scale represents that version of the plane. I thought of fabrication the nose with thin plastic sheets but that would be tough to do and still not sure of a good way to make the clear plastic bombardier's window on the lower nose.

Edit: The real answer to the problem is if someone could make one of the vacuum formed noses for the Hasegawa kit or the company could make a proper Ford nose B-24 since the nose is separate on those kits if I recall correctly. There were a lot of those Ford built B-24's in the war and I'm surprised that no one has aver really made one of those for sale.

Edit 2: Looks like Airfix just came out with the B-24H with a Ford nose this week! Maybe a project is back on the table for next winter when I have time.

Unfortunately, the only picture found of the plane when it was lettered YF-C with the 355th FG / 358th FS is the one above with Lt Haraburda setting on the edge of the cockpit.  You can see the top / left of the "Y" in the bottom / right corner of the picture.

I'm definitely no expert on the Mustang or WWII squadrons and will typically just model using complete decal sets and following the instructions as well as reference photos of the actual aircraft.  Being that I was now doing this plane in honor of Lt Haraburda and had no photos of the actual plane, I wanted to get this as close a possible through research.  My early searching on the 355th FG made me think that I was going to be doing a red nose and tailed Mustang with no invasion stripes. I was thinking the stripes would have been completely removed by Nov 1944...I was wrong on all accounts.  

A lot of early planes in the 355th FG had white spinners and a white stripe at the nose behind the spinners (similar to the memorial wall prop).  I couldn't find dates on when changes were made but did confirm that the 355th FG was composed of 3 fighter squadrons with the following color changes for ID:

354th FS (WR coded) red nose and tails
357th FS (OS coded) blue nose and tails
358th FS (YF coded) yellow nose and tails

All three fighter squadrons in the 355th FG had white spinners.

Once I had this narrowed down, I started looking for pictures of 358th FS (YF marked) Mustangs from November of 1944.  Credit goes to ASISBID for a great collection of pictures.  The only clear pictures that I could find that were definite on dates are below (and to my surprise - still wearing invasion stripes):





YF-D Sweet Stuff had a non typical antiglare panel as is was painted down to the panel line above the exhaust and ran straight back.  Typical antiglare panels were angle up toward the nose and were closely masked near the bottom of the front windscreen as seen on YF-S above as well as 44-13366 below.



With all this, I was comfortable enough to move forward with detail painting.  The only thing I'm truly guessing at is the nose art.  We know the plane was nicknamed "Little Nobody" and it was painted on the Mustang when it was shot down.  This is noted in the Missing Air Crew Report and was part of the evidence used to identify at the crash site.  Talking with Andrapos, he gave me the go ahead for artistic liberty on the "Little Nobody" nose art.

I spent a couple of weeks trying to get custom decals made for " Little Nobody" and the fuselage stencil but gave up after horrible communication and non response.  I decided to do them myself and is where I'm at today.  1st time doing at home custom decals but I think they came out pretty good.

cool

how did you make the custom decals ?

You can buy blank decal paper and you will have to do the artwork yourself with some sort of program. When I did the P-47N I did it on MS paint, which is probably retarded but I'm a 'puter tard so I used what I had. I used real photo scans to start with. The OP probably did it a way better way. Then you can print it onto the paper but beware that the decal paper isn't always freindly with printers at places like staples so they need to be aware that the temp needs to be set to a cooler setting or you will fuck up their printer.
Don't use an ink jet, It is water soluble ink.
Edit: You have to coat the ink with a clear coat to make sure the ink won't run in the water when putting the decals on.

Bought clear decal paper for laser printers from Amazon.  I used Inkscape for the graphics design.  Was pretty easy to do as I have a ton of custom fonts and do graphic design for laser engraving.  

I was limited to black as all I have is a B/W laser at home.  I thought about buying a color ink jet but read horror stories about using ink for decals.  I thought about buying a color laser printer but they're expensive and figured my wife wouldn't agree with my justification to buy one.  

Just rolled the dice on the laser decal paper and did a few test runs before applying to the model.  No issues at all and I  think they turned out great.

ETA the text for the fuselage stencil is so small I can't read it with my eyes.  Have to use macro setting on my camera to see it.  I had a total of 5 stencils for P-51D's on other decal sheets but couldn't bring myself to put one on the model with the wrong info in it.  The stencil I drew up is to the best of my knowledge all correct for that plane.

Haven't had a lot of time but working on it when I can.  Getting close.

Had to strip the propeller back BC of paint scheme change in the middle of build.  Also switching to paper mache tanks as they would have been standard in late '44.

Still a few bits and pieces to attach, then I think I'm down to clear coat, wash and weathering.

Looking good.

Wow that's good!!

Thank y'all for the compliments.  I'm always critical of my models and never think they're that great.

Hard to tell from previous pics but clearcoated.


Not my best chipping job.  




More chipping, panel line wash and weathering to do.  Working in small sections to keep from overdoing it.  Will be going light on the weathering with this one.

Not sure how I missed this thread. Solid work. The newer Airfix kits are better than they use to be,  this one seems pretty good. If you haven’t already, check out the offering from Eduard.

Not much to show but making a little progress on weathering.  Needs a little more here and there. Then to add the exhaust stains.

Im a bit stuck until I can figure out scratch building the fuel tank line plumbing.  Not happy with my 1st attempt.  Looking for something that scales better.  Also need to scratch build the anti-sway mounts.  The kit mounts were wrong and I removed them weeks ago when doing the invasion stripes.

Cool.
What are you using for your seam lines and rivet weathering? I have been using lust a thin mechanical pencil and clear coating over it. For the exhaust I tried the same bud smudged it a little first.

Panel lines and rivets are black Tamiya panel line wash.  Gun smoke stains are oil paints from a tube.  Will do the exhaust stains with oil paints as well.

Anti-sway bits


Fuel lines.  Not super happy with it as they were a bitch to get situated.  Ended up not as straight as they started.