Hello everyone.

After being entertained by numerous build logs I have read I thought I would do the same thing with my latest build, a Trumpeter 1/32 Lockheed P38-L-5-LO Lightning.

I have been building models for many years (over 40 now!) but am still very new to this weathering thing. I was in the RAAF for many years and in all my time there I never really noticed panel lines on any aircraft I worked on, even from just a few feet away. Therefore, please do not expect lots of pre-shading and panel line work as I do not believe it is very realistic. My opinion.. :-)

I am not going to go into the history and development that lead to this version of the ‘Fork-Tailed Devil’, suffice to say that Google is your friend and will give you pages and pages of reading about this World War II aircraft.

For this project I am going to be using the Eduard BigEd Colour Set. The BigEd set consists of:
32126 P-38J/L Lightning Exterior Set,
32134 Undercrriage set,
32567 Interior Set and
32590 Seatbelts set.

Just to clarify, this is the colour set, not the earlier set. No mask in this set. Not really a problem as the last Eduard masks I tried, that came in the F4F-4 Wildcat BigEd set didn’t even come close to fitting the mouldings in the kit. I have written to Eduard about it but haven’t had an explanation as yet. Strange thing is that the list on the website states that you get the masks in the set, but the front of the envelope they come in doesn’t list them??

The Exterior Set covers items like the engines, various access doors and flaps, and the roof of the flap area if you wish to model the plane with the flaps down. Seeing the flaps in these early Trumpeter kits are moveable these detail parts could dress up a rather plain area of the kit. 2 sprues of nickel plated brass with 71 parts.

The Undercarriage set covers, yesy you guessed it, the undercarriage with various brackets, hinges and oleo scissors to bring an even higher fidelity to the Trumpeter kit. 2 sprues with 133 parts.

The Interior Set basically rebuilds the interior of the kit with far higher detail than the original. New coloured instrument panels, ammo feeds sets, bezels.. everything but the kitchen sink! 3 sprues with 224 parts.

The seatbelts set has one sprue with 30 parts which are painted for you.

The front of the box informs us that the kit has 362 parts, so with the extra Eduard parts the count comes to 820 parts. Gulp…



Here is a picture of my workbench in a relatively clean state.



The Instructions cover and sturdy cardboard BigEd Envelope.

First step for myself when using these sets is to go through the kits instructions and mark where the PE parts are attached to the aircraft. I have missed a part or two in a few earlier PE intensive builds and find these marks jog my memory quite well.

And now to the build!

Second step for me is to copy the part layout diagrams and pin them to the cork board right in front of me. Saves lots of looking later.

First decision, whether or not to build the complete engines? You need to build a little of them as there is no other way to support the propeller, except maybe by glueing it directly to the cowling. That is not for me. The engines can also be filled with buckshot or small lead sinkers to give a bit more weight to help it stand on its nose wheel.. There are no access panels to leave open,and not its behind.. without surgery, and no detail on the inside of the cowlings without doing much scratch building. Maybe the next one I build…

I found a little flash on some of my sprues. No biggy but wonder how these fairly new moulds could have flash problems. Luckily nothing will be seen of this so the gaps and seam lines don’t need to be fixed. There are no more than any other kit I have built, and all of the ejector pin marks so far are hidden.



Sprue H1



Sprue H2

One problem I found was that the prop shaft end was a little too long and prevented the front detail panel of the engine (reduction gearbox?) from fitting properly. A quick bit of surgery with my razor saw fixed it after taking off about 1.5 mm of the butt of the shaft.



Basic engine.. well almost..


First PE part... a Trumpeter one.

I have heard rumours about how bad the ignition wires are to glue in position so all I did was drill out the holes in the engine and push the wires through far enough so they stayed in position with no glue. Fundly enough the end of the harnesses glued in to its slot with thick CA glue with no problems. Maybe I had heard wrong.

The fit of the item at the base of the engine (coolant tank) was atrocious. When you glued it together it left a huge gap at the top of the tank if you had the bottom of the tank aligned. Luckily it is not a problem as it is right under the engine and you couldn’t see it even if you had the panels off.

I eventually built this engine just to see how it looks but the second one will be the simplified version. No painting done as it will all be invisible anyway.




Views of complete engine.

That’s enough for now. Stay tuned for further updates!

Hello Warren -

Wow - As one of my fellow Club Memebers would say. "That's a lot of plastic!"
The P-38 was one of my Dad's favorite fighters. He was an aircraft mechanic working on B-24's, and he had the opportunity to go over to the adjacent fighter squadron and watch a test pilot from Lockheed put the P-38 through her paces as well as through gunnery practice, afterwhich he came away a true believer.
I have the Academy 1/72 scale version (unbuilt -- for the moment) and look forward to your progress!

Nice start you've made there. May I heartily concur with your views on weathering. Almost always overdone.
(Nod to Nige (Lampie) - I knew I'd crack and post my views on this somewhere, eventually!

I wish my work area would look like yours, I regularly spend 15 minutes looking for a tube or pot of something. I still haven't found my pin vice!

Keep it up

Steve

Back again for an update. Gives my eyes a chance to recover!
I started the main undercarriage last night but only got a small amount done before sleepiness won again. The pieces have been going together in typical Trumpeter fashion, that is they fit well but require a bit of cleanup of moulding seams etc. A quick swipe with the back of a No 11 Exacto type knife is enough to remove most of them without leaving any chatter marks, and not causing the blades sharp bit to become less sharp.


Sprue A1


Sprue B1

Now the real fun begins. It’s PE time! This is only about my four PE infested model so be gentle. The first job was to fold up two pieces to form the scissors for the main gear oleos. The folding went well, but the attaching was hopeless. For some reason the were not even close to working so after about two hours of trying I just gave in and used the kit supplied ones. I do not think it is physically possible to get the oles to sit in their correct positions the way the etched parts are designed.. Oh well..



Here are the two parts of the scissors. They are in a box now waiting for another build.

Next up was the left main wheel bay. After removing the parts from the sprue and cleaning them up I proceeded to fold, roll, scribe and finally attach the PE parts. There are four boxes for the roof of the area, numerous parts I believe are inspection panels, and other pieces that I have no idea about.
No real problems with these parts and Eduard PE is a breeze to fold with either tweezers or my Hold& Fold. It is only small but I couldn’t fold many of the items without it.


Here is a picture of the almost complete wheel well.


And here is the completed left main undercarriage bay.

An interesting thing I found while looking at a walk around of a P-38 was that the wheel wells, and most of the pieces inside are all aluminium colour. This is different to how Trumpeter would have you paint the area with Interior Green. I know it is probably a restoration and they left off the interior green, but I will use the evidence of my own eyes and paint the whole area aluminum. Model companies have been known to get colour references hopelessly wrong at times.. If anyone can show me a P-38L with interior green wheel wells that would be great. I more than welcome input to my modeling.
Last step for the second page of the instructions was to attach the power plant to the main wheel well via turbo-charger plumbing, or it could be supercharger plumbing...


No visible means of support..

Until next time, same bat-time, same bat-place..

That's a great start on a difficult model to build. Just hang in there and take your time and you will have a real masterpiece in the end.

Texas

Thanks all.

After a day off yesterday construction will be continuing sometime today. MOSTLY smooth sailing so far, but a few niggles caused by me..

Warren:
This is going to be a beautiful build. I can't wait to see this one completed.

Taylor

Hello again.

Now for the next exciting (?) installment of 'The Saga of the P-38'.

Main thing I am concentrating on lately has been the Port Boom (Left one fellas) and adding a photoetched door. But first up I did the rudder and the dreaded, by some, PE hinge. It is actually PE and a metal shaft that fits nicely into a little cut out in the rudder structure.



Here is a picture of the item.



And here is the rudder it sits in.

After that I glued together a pod that sits on the side of the boom, I am presuming it is an oil or water cooler. One problem was that I trimmed off a itty bitty piece of plastic from the side of one half that LOOKED like it was just sprue remains, but on closer inspection of the next half it is a small drain hole fairing of some kind. Oh well.. Luckily you can't see it. The pod is going to take a bit of cleaning up and Mr Surfacering I think... Fit not as good as the big Trumpeter bits.



The pod...

Next up I glued together the two halves of the port boom BEFORE I replaced the cooling doors with the PE bits. Oh well. It took a little longer but I got them done without too much hassle. It took a little muscle to get it all to fit but it does fit pretty well. Pictures in next installment.

Next I went to the starboard (that's the right boom) boom and proceeded to remove the cooling doors I am replacing with PE. This is one are where PE can really lift a model as the original doors are very thick compared to the wafer thin PE doors and look far more realistic.



Here is a picture of one of the doors in question. I am not sure if you can see it but see how thick it is?



Here is the door in PE. See how nice and thin it is?

Also notice how you needed to get a subtle curve in the door? Not hard at all. Metal has a natural tendency to curl when it is rolled on one side. Just roll the metal with the end of your metal craft knife, or anything else smooth and circular, until you get the curve you require. For pieces this size it is much easier than trying to use a piece of wood or metal to curve the metal around.

I then got back to starting some PE doors under the engines, but after looking at trying to get the PE mesh into the hole before placing the door in position in the built up boom, and the carpet monster eating a tiny PE bracket (first one for ages) I have decided to just show the doors in the closed position.. Maybe just one of them open..

Till next we meet..

Greetings All!

A quick photo follow up from my last entry.

Main wheel well interior shot.


The next installment of the P-38 story starts with the finishing off if the two tail booms and then continues onto the nose gear undercarriage area and then onto the office.
All the cooling doors have now been replaced with PE items. For a bit of a talking point I have one of the doors open and one closed.

Two doors in PE.

PE Mesh screen for behind on of the doors.

After filling the seams on the booms and sanding them nice and smooth I will need to re-scribe the lines on top of the engine nacelles as it appears, going by the rivet lines, that these were two access doors for the tops of the engines. Probably makes removing the valve covers a little easier..

One item I have not seen on in any photos of the P-38L is the odd assortment of wires, presumably aerials, on the outboard lower parts of the fixed parts of the rudder. The metal plate is there but the aerial elements have been removed in the only clear picture I have of the area. I have another period picture of a P-38L at the factory and I think I can see the aerials. But the jury is still out..

See the metal panel at the bottom of the boom? Anyone know what it was used for?


Nasty ejector pin marks to be filled. I hate these things! Nose wheel well roof/cockpit floor. :-)

Yesterday I started on the cockpit which is built on top of the nose wheel well. First up was the instrument panel and the kit one has been replaced with the one from the Eduard Interior set. The only problem so far is not with the kit but with the glue I am using. It is a new brand to me and the applicator is getting clogged after every use. I was told by the bloke in the hobby shop that the firm has gone out of business. I can see why if I am having all this trouble NO ONE is going to buy the stuff again. The glue is great but the applicator sux.

Am off to the hobby shop again to see if I can find a solution to my super glue application woes.


Three main parts of the instrument panel all bent and ready for assembly and painting.

And after the assembly and painting and a few expletives.

I thought I would get this update into the blog before I start painting in the cockpit area. Bit more involved than the flat aluminium everywhere in the wheel wells.. well except for the undercarriage legs which are aluminium laquer.. and I am not sure if the small compressed air bottles in the wheel wells were originally yellow or if the one in my photo has been painted yellow for some obscure modern safety reason.

Hi everyone.

Would anyone out there have a colour photo or two of the area behind the cockpit of the P-38L? I have found one of the cockpit, albeit with many pieces removed (the one in the USAF Museum I think). The painting guide from Trumpeter is a bit vague at times..

TIA

Hi Warren

You're doing some nice, tight work on this one (especially that instrument panel). I intend to watch your progress.

I have several pics of the area in question I think you might find useful (I'm assuming you mean the area with the radio equipment)? If you'd like, pm me your email addy and I could send them to you. I would post them for you directly, but the only online storage I currently have is the Aeroscale gallery, which has fairly limited space.

Also, here's a link to some other pics you might find useful during this build . . .

http://www.pbase.com/mitchellphotographic/lockheed_p38

Regards

Automaton

Yes. I am starting to run out of storage here. If any admin person is reading this is it possible to get more space for this build blog?

And I used to think the 1/48th scale Monogram kit was complicated....

Trumpeter seems to have moved the complication equation onward. These are, in my opinion, the most comprehensive 1/32 kits available at the moment. I wish I could afford to buy every one of them that came out! :-)

I have done lots of fiddly little thigns over the past few days. Have spent lots of time in the hobby room but don't seem to have much to show for it. I am up to the final assembly and painting of the cockpit and have assembled the flaps and ailerons (did you know there is a town in the Northern Territory called Aileron?). The cockpit and all its PE have taken ages, but once I post some more pictures I think you may see that it is worth it. Just the placards make a big detail difference.

Fundly enough I used the Trumpeter PE engien control levers in the cockpit as the Eduard ones are a little bit small in my eyes.

Photos and a further update in the next 24 hours!

Greetings from cloudy, but warm, Brisbane.
I almost started to dislike the PE hinges everyone else seems to poo-poo until I realized I had made a mistake and located one of the small metal rods in the wrong place. It fitted there in the first flap, but not the other one.
After my trials with the CA glue bottle yesterday I finally cutoff the so-called precision applicator and just started carefully squeezing the bottle and putting the PE parts up close until the small bubble of CA glue and PE met and a small dot of glue was left on the CA part. This will have to do for the moment anyway.
Another problem is that my two older bottles of CA have been thickening over the last few weeks. The this stuff has gone thick as the gap filling CA and the gap filling stuff is getting harder to even get out of the bottle. Think it may be a good idea to get some new stuff to replace the Gap filling CA. Anyone knows what causes this? Is it just age?

Getting back to the cockpit I am waiting for some more painting info for my cockpit in the radio area, but have painted the piece of equipment the colour I presume it might be. It needs another coat anyway and the seams of the box need filling anyway. I normally solder these up but I am going to try Mr Dissolved Putty this time to see if that works.


The radio rack so far.

While I was in the fantasy shop the other day (hobby shop) dreaming of the Trumpeter 1/16 King Tiger with interior, I noticed a man busily jotting down numbers in front of the GSI Creos paint stand, that’s better know as Gunze to you and I. Turns out he is the sales rep for the Brisbane area and he answered a few questions I had. Did you know that Gunze is the biggest selling range of model paints in the world? They also have airbrushes but they are not imported in to Australia due to their expense.
Anyway, enough of the trivia. Next up was finishing up the cockpit side panels.


Here is a collection of black things for the cockpit..


Here is the throttle quadrant pre finishing.


Here is the left side panel.


Here is the right side panel.

I am happy with the way the engine control levers have come out. The photo I have shows small orange knobs on two of the levers and they appear to have worked out rather well. I used Tamiya acrylic gloss, which is about 14 years old now but still in great condition, and it is thick enough to form a small globule if you put enough on the levers top part. I used a small satay skewer for this and the tiny blob of paint transferred to the lever just fine. I used the same idea with the red topped ones as well. The silver ones are silver Mr Hobby metallic paint which I decided to give a try after chatting with the rep. It is ready to spray from the bottle, yet surprisingly you can brush it on as well. The reason I tried it is because all the others I have tried have had large flacks of metal in them for the metallic effect, buthe flakes are too big and they don’t look right. This Gunze paint has no huge flakes and reminds me of the old Humbrol #11 silver fox colour.

So after all that the instrument panel and pedals are in, the side panels are attached, but the photos didn’t come out well enough and I will take them again tomorrow. Hopefully will have the cockpit finished on the ‘morrow!

Looking good so far Warren.

Thanks for the tip of making the knobs 3-d. Might come in handy in the future.

Tony.

Hi Warren

Check your message box.

Regards

Automaton

Thanks for the piccies Automaton. Very handy!

Time for another update in the P-38L saga. You know how you can be working away happily on something and then the thought pops into your head “Hmmm.. This is a little risky” well that happened to me yesterday. Part of the PE set contains new detail parts for the roof of the flap area. The P-38, when on the ground, mostly looks to have its flaps raised. I know all the aircraft I have flown as soon as you land and are on the roll out you raise the flaps. Even though this was the case I decided to remove all the moulded in detail as directed and put in the PE pieces.


Moulded in detail. Not bad but I have PE!

I inserted a blade I hadn’t used before in my larger knife, sort of a very sharp chisel blade that can exert a lot of pressure on a small are if required. I started carving away at the detail and was thinking how well it was going. Carve, carve, carve and then the thought popped into my head as above (the risky bit) about carving the plastic toward me.. not a good idea to slip.. and sure enough about 2/1000ths of a second later I slipped and put a nice hole in my thumb.. DOH!

After that I got out my Chinese-made power grinder thingy, battery operated, and started with that. No stab problem now. Got the first three areas cleaned up with little problem, and was ¾ finished the fourth and final one when I discovered I had ground a hole in the trailing edge of the wing above the flap.. DOH DOH DOH!! Looks like some extra filler will be needed. Luckily the PE insert will aid in supporting the filler. Idiot!!


All gone! I wiped up the blood..

Then I realized I hadn’t taken a photo of the flap areas with the PE installed… Oh well.. But here is a piccy I took after the fact..


Flap roof PE.

After those little problems I started glueing the fuselage/wing parts together. Everything fit really well except for the sloping part of the top part of the fuselage that required a little muscle from a couple of clamps I have. But all looks to have set nicely and will need little filler.

The other problem at the moment is that if I put the plane down upside down to do anything on the bottom it will wreck some of the PE stuff poking out of the cockpit. Have to keep an eye that I put some sort of support down first.


You can't really see it in this photo but there is a little tiny PE lever on the right hand side that is in clear and present danger if I don' put the thingy on something to support it when I turn it upside down. This is the cockpit so far sans seat (seatbelts going on now) and radio rack. Thanks again for the photos Automaton.

Next up I started the pre-painted PE seatbelts. There is no way that you could get the stitching to look as good using a brush /stick/pin whatever, well I couldn’t anyway, so the small outlay for this PE set is more than worth it for me. Got the lap belts done without any problems.


The two lapbelts. Sorry the piccy isn't great. look like the ones still used in many aircraft nowadays.

Till next time folks!

Boomshanka

You're quite welcome. Looks like you were pretty much on the right track colorwise.

That cockpit is looking really nice. I'm still kinda dumbfounded by how good the instrument panel looks. Those control lever knobs turned out nice, too. You're gonna cause me to start wanting one of those kits.

Automaton

Oh oh.. I just obtained a copy of the P-38 Walk Around from Squadron/Signal and they say that all P-38s came from the factory with wheel wells, gear doors and flap housings all painted in Interior green.. ALl the reference photos I had seen showed them to be natural aluminium, or grey... Looks like I may be in for some fun now...

But then I read another reference saying that when they got to the P-38L, the aircraft I am replicating, they had forgotten about painting the pits green and painted them aluminium instead. Think I will go with that reference.. :-)

Well Warren - If anyone ever gives you grief and gets picky over it, just smile and say "Where's yours?"

Love that piece of advise Johannes! :-)

Time for another update. Things have slowed down as they are getting a mite fiddly with tiny little undercarriage door hinges and parts.
It never ceases to amaze me how small pieces can literally disappear. The other day I wa cutting off a tiny PE piece without using my holder and as soon as I cut it off I saw it fly upwards, do a half pike with twist, and disappear out of view to my right. I thought no problem I saw exactly which way it went and its trajectory I thought I knew. You know what thought did don’t you. The piece remains at large to this day.
Then there is what we used to call in the instrument fitting business the ‘Mach One Syndrome’. That is what happens when you pick up a tiny piece with your tweezers, squeeze a little too hard or the tweezers twist, and the part shoots off never to be found again. I worked out much later that that little sound you hear just after it happens is the sound of the part breaking the sound barrier as it travels off to who knows where.


Most of the silver bits, which have actually been painted in aluminium, are the Eduard parts to gussy up the back bulkhead of the gun compartment. This is the back bulkhead of the gun bay.


This is one of the pieces of PE supplied with the kit. It is one of the dive brakes fitted to the P-39L to help with problems of pulling out of dives due to the high speeds causing compressability problems and reversed controls.


Here is the seat with the belts installed. I am still learning these and will be doing the next set differently so I can get them to sit better. I haven’t fiddled with these ones very much as yet.

The rockets come in two halves and a set of tail fins moulded with a piece of the rocket body. The two main parts of the bodies are fine, but the tail sections all have a nasty mould seam running right through the middle of them. Clean up continues. Does anyone know what colour these rockets were painted? Trumpeter gives no clue but I have seen a picture of another 1/18th scale model from 21st Century and the rockets are painted black with red noses. I also vaguely remember the Matchbox kit I built decades ago having red noses, but I think they suggested the bodies be painted white.


Here are the tail parts, the one on the right has the PE disk and gives an idea of the improvement in detail from even this small addition.

Next up was the real fun bit so far, the undercarriage doors. After cleaning up the nose wheel door and four main wheel doors I removed all the excess plastic as per the Eduard instructions. Then I removed all the PE parts, most of which had two spares which was good as one of my PE parts arrived damaged, and bent them as required. Some of them I bent wrongly. Instead of bending the pieces to 90 degrees I bent them to 180 degrees. I didn’t realize this until much later and they had already been installed. I doubt if anyone will ever turn the model over to have a look at the undercarriage bits anyway!


Top door is cleaned up door as it came off the sprue. Bottom door is prepared as directed by Mr Eduard.

These hinges got me a little unhappy with things at times, but as usual you preserver and finish it in the end. You tend to develop your techniques as you proceed and inevitably the last ones are much easier than the first ones. One example is that I started using thin CA glue and ended up using the thick stuff for the last few door sets as it held the PE in position until I could hit it with the accelerator. Marvellous stuff that accelerator.


Here is one of the doors in question. No doubt the PE does a fine job of upping the detail level of this already very detailed kit. If I hadn't been using the PE I would have been finished ages ago! But where is the fun in finishing a kit quickly? The longer you take the better value the kit has been.. :-)

I am almost to the last page of the instructions now and hopefully all will go smoothly for the next few hours at least! Stay tuned for another update!

Hi All.
Here is another update on a rather eventful couple of days. You see the cork board in the first picture? That wasn’t secured to the wall at that time. I was relying on gravity to keep it there as I had it on a slight lean into the wall. Sometimes the base would push in and it got a little wobbly. I ignored this, at my peril as it turns out, and just moved the base out again each time. I walked out of the room a few days ago to get a drink, and being a typical Brisbane day for this time of year, I thought I would put on the air-con as it was getting up to about 30 degrees Celsius and 90% humidity in the hobby room. I turned it on and heard a clatter from somewhere in the house. I forgot about it thinking it may have been one of our three cats having fun in the laundry. Did what I had to do and went back to the hobby room to find the board had blown over when I turned on the air-con, knocked over a container of water I keep for cleaning my airbrushes with and scattered stuff.. This included the radio rack I thought I had safely stashed. The back bulkhead got bent and two of the radios got sent flying.

After cleaning up the mess I repaired the damage to the radio rack. Luckily the board didn’t hit the plane sitting upside down on the desk. Then the nose wheel door broke off when I picked up the plane. This took about 30 minutes to fix as it is supported by nothing but PE hinges.

The other problem was self-induced again and I will explain it later. I started working on the gun bay without filing the ejector pin marks as I thought they would be covered by the guns etc. BZZZZTT! Wrong answer.. Oh well. Started by modifying the kit parts as directed by Eduard for the canon ammo drum, This wasn’t too hard and I was lucky that I had some spare 1/35 scale King Tiger road wheels whose axle hubs where just the right size to use in this area! Then there was lots of bending etc until I got the bits to sit where they should.


See the darker grey bit? That os the tank bit.. :-)


Cannon ammo feed.

After attaching the drum to the rack I painted some shells and put them in the feed chute. Next up I cleaned up the guns. Two of them had quite a bit of flash for a newish mould and two of the barrels had got bent at some time. All cleaned up and I rolled the PE cooling jackets using my other bending tools. Once I had them almost the right size I slid them over the barrels, tacked one end with CA then squeezed the jackets gently together to get the end as close as I could. Over and done with I painted the four machine guns and one cannon. Then I glued them in the rack and put in the ammo drums, Peed them and then realized that the ejector pins marks were still staring me in the face. Bugger! Attacked them with putty and left them to dry for a while.
After they had dried for a short time I tried to fit the nose cone over the guns. Surprise, surprise they didn’t fit anymore due to the new cooling jackets. I trimmed out the nosecone as suggested by Eduard and still had fun getting them in as one of them had moved slightly while drying. Oh well. You wouldn’t notice if I didn’t tell you.


Flashy gun and one of the bent ones.


Cleaned up and ready for PEing.


Five PEed guns.


The guns painted and installed. Will drill out barrels later on (if I remember!)

The next thing that hit me was how I was going to get enough weight in the nose to prevent the plane becoming a tail sitter. One photo I have seen appeared to show a P-38 sitting with its tail on the ground. Maybe it is an optical illusion. Too this end I removed the guns again and glued the nosecone to the fuselage and started making new barrels using styrene rod. As I was patiently filing down a rod to the right size I sort of said to myself that there is no way I will be able to reproduce the cooling jackets I had just glued onto the guns and that it won’t look anywhere near as good without them, so I have resigned myself to finding a way of making it a non-tail sitter without being able to put weights in the nose as I want to be able to see all the work I did on the ammo bay.


Sorry its a bit blurry but there is not much room for any weight with all the stuff installed.

I ended up using the kit supplied feeds for the machine guns as trying to get the Eduard pieces to work got just too hard, and after glueing the parts to my fingers I turned the air over the workbench a dark shade of blue, rolled my fingers apart to remove the bits and trashed one of the feeds in the process. That was only after I had a closer look at the kit feeds and decided they were not too bad when I had painted them up. Sometimes the advantages of the PE parts are far outweighed by the time it takes to use them.

Next up I tried to install the ammo rack in the area and found that the PE parts I installed on the bulkhead at the back of the area where now preventing the rack from sitting in place. Marvellous! After a bit of wittling work on the rack it almost fit perfectly.. For some reason the rack was a little warped, that I hadn’t noticed beforehand, but after the application of a little muscle, a little CA and a puff of accelerator it all stayed in place.
Now where are the doors for the area? Ah that's right! These had large ejector pin marks on the interior surface. I repaired these marks and the doors are now awaiting their final coat of interior green.


Marks gone. Bit at the top is the overhead structure in the bay.

I then made a start on the air scoops on the sides of the booms. Why can't the manufacturers wait a bit longer to eject the sprues from the moulds? The plastic wouldn't be as soft and maybe there would be no ejector pin marks. Or am I off target here?

But that is where I must leave it until tomorrow. Hope you are enjoying the build. All tips and comments welcome.


Scoop with lots of lovely ejector pin marks.

G'day everyone.

Nice to see so many people following the blog. Seems I was closer to the end than I thought. Glued on the small tail plane extensions, air scoops and various other small pieces. Unfortunately most of them have fought tooth and nail being put on the model, or have left large seams. Not a problem as I am trying the white glue seam filling method and it seems to be working pretty well.

I built the PE part to replace the arm holding the gun sight, but I don't think it would be a strong enough joint between the metal parts and the plastic sight so I used the kit piece which is just a little thick, but won't be very noticeable when the beasty is buttoned up.

Ever dropped a part and it has disappeared completely from the face of the Earth? That happened to the reflector glass off the gun sight. It dropped onto the hard plastic mat on the floor, or so I thought, but I have been over the floor with a fine tooth comb and can't find hide nor hair of it. May have to try and make one.

The clear pieces in this kit are made of extremely brittle plastic as I found out the hard way. I was removing the rear vision mirror bulge to glue to the top of the canopy and it broke in two as I was trying to remove it from the sprue! I will do my best to repair it but it is supposed to stay clear.. but now there is a big seam in it.. Oh well.

And the nosewheel undercarriage door decided to part company with the model again.

Have you ever tried Mr Colour Metal Paints? They are made by GSI Creos, the makers of Gunze Paints, and they are superb. Straight out of the bottle, no thinning and they cover fantastically well. And unlike some other aluminium paints I have tried there are no huge pieces of metalflake in it. It can be polished but is a bit delicate and will definitely need sealing with Future or clear coat.

Only a few small pieces left and I can start painting. Only problem is there is a delay in the decals I wanted to use. So I am going to use the kit decals on this one. Unfortunately they are both pretty boring schemes. I would love to do Putt Putt Maru but haven't found the decals in 1/32. So it is either 'Itsy Bitsy II' or the other scheme with the cartoon horses head with the white spinners with black stripes. The stripes come as decals in the kit. ANy other suggestions don't hesitate to give me a hoi!

That's it for now.

Warren

Hey Warren, keep 'em coming mate. Been keeping a keen eye on our how your progressing with this one; one of my favourite aircraft (what isn't!!)