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Hasegawa 1/32 P-51D Mustang


Kevin Futter

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Those of you who are LSP members, or follow me on Facebook, may already be aware of this build, so my apologies for the double-up. I've now got it to the stage where I'm painting on some of the markings, and of course, cutting the required masks on the Silhouette Portrait! But first, a quick recap of the build to this point.

 

The kit was given to me by a friend a couple of years ago, and I decided to mate it up with a parts kit that another friend had sent me a few years prior to that. This latter box contained most of an entire Hasegawa Mustang kit, along with an assortment of aftermarket items and some scratch-built modifications. I decided to treat both kits as one, and use whatever aftermarket I could find in the parts box, and use it in a build of the first kit. Hopefully that makes sense! But in spirit, I wanted this to be an out-of-box build - so no rescribing!

 

So, I started with the Grand Phoenix resin cockpit set and instrument panel:

 

QhjlyX.jpg

 

xG3ExI.jpg

 

I modified the tail wheel and fuselage mount to allow me to fit it at the end of the build:

 

PkNT67.jpg

 

I used Moskit exhausts in place of the kit ones, and modified the engine so I could mount it onto a length of aluminium tubing, to assist with installing it into the fuselage:

 

V5nbM7.jpg

 

The tubing also now forms the prop shaft.

 

Assembly from there was pretty straightforward:

 

SFCfPU.jpg

 

I removed the excessive bulges from the True Details tyres:

 

jO3TmE.jpg

 

The scheme I've chosen is "Butch Baby", which is one of the schemes Hasegawa provides in the newer of the two releases I have. This has red-and-yellow stripes on the spinner, and similarly-coloured chequers on the nose. I had a lot of trouble masking up the spinner, and I'll spare you the gory details, but I got there in the end:

 

Q0Pc78.jpg

 

This brings us up to today's update: masking the nose chequers. In preparation for this step, I scanned the kit decals, prepped them in Photoshop, traced them in Silhouette Studio, and then cut them on the Silhouette Portrait:

 

vEmOq0.png

Note that I'll be using commercial masks for the national markings, and the kit decals for the aircraft name and any relevant stencils. If anybody wants a copy of the cut file, I can upload it here, but it's a bit wobbly in places, and probably needs to be re-drawn from scratch. I cut two copies so that I could test them on a mule, before I commit them to the final model.

 

I forged on ahead with the chequers, however:

 

BV91Hk.jpg

 

SMS Red next:

 

3KPXgv.jpg

 

And unmasked:

 

PEsmew.jpg

 

Not bad! But certainly not perfect. Oddly, the vinyl mask managed to lift off a divot of the yellow paint in one area, which I definitely was not expecting:

 

diYAwm.jpg

 

What I was expecting, however, was that the vinyl masks wouldn't conform all that well around the chin intake area, and I was right about that:

 

3naerq.jpg

 

I'll re-mask this area with Tamiya tape and go over it, but since the red seems a little fragile, I'll be laying down a couple of gloss coats before I do.

 

Overall, it's a little untidy, but definitely in the ball park. Hopefully for the next update I'll have it all tidy and masked up ready for the main paint job.

 

Kev

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4 hours ago, Mozart said:

Ah chequers, don’t you love’em! You’ve made a good start Kev but in my experience “touch ups” are almost inevitable in some areas. 

Agreed: been there, done that. This checked nose looks fine to me.

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