Well, I am still plugging at mine even though the campaign is long over by now.
More catastrophes have befallen this build than i have encountered in a single build in many many years. I shalln't embarrass myself by enumerating them at this point, and besides, I think i've managed to pull it out of the fire.
Only a few details left at this point - mainly the exhaust, gun sight, and some touch ups.
About the exhaust - I was going to use a set of Moskit exhausts, but it turns out they are not actually all that accurate. Also turn out the Ultracast P-51 shroud-less exhausts also suffer from the same inaccuracy (and they do not fit very well to boot, even though they are supposedly designed for the Tamiya kit I built!). So I gave up on aftermarket exhausts and have done what i can to get the kit parts looking acceptable (at least their shape is more or less accurate!)
so I have another hour or two of work before i call her done for the purposes of this campaign (and at this point i don't even care if i get a ribbon - THIS ONE WILL GET FINISHED!!!), but here are some photos of the gun bay build up (that's what has held me up the longest other than various disaster recovery efforts):
The Aires gun bay was horrible in my opinion. In the end the only thing i used from the kit was the 50 cal gun bodies and the cover panels (which were warped but i managed to straighten them out after much cursing and breakage). I'm never buying another one of their gun bay sets - EVER!!!
the gun bay itself is scratch built after determining the Aires part wasn't particularly useful.
as you can see i started off using the aires ammo bays from the set:
after a little more research though, is became clear that the ammo they cast was FAR too small to represent 50 cal rounds - it was more like they molded 1/48 scale pencils in the linkages. So I used a dremel tool to carefully grind off the top 1/4 cm on the ammo bays and used photo etched 50 cal rounds from true details. A bonus is that they are already brass colored!
I was going to show one of the ammo belts laid out in the bay but not yet loaded into the gun, but issues with the Aires parts for the ammo belt guides to the gun dissuaded me. I had to heavily modify the ammo guides to make them even remotely acceptable, and in the end i wish i had just made them from scratch. but they came out passable. the completed gun bay looks like this:
The gun cleaning/loading instructions on the hinged panel were cobbled together from various decal sheets to make something that had the same general look. It would have been nice if Aires had included a decal for this in the kit, as it exists on almost all P-51 gun bays and it is very difficult to sort out yourself.
I still need to get the bar that runs from the wing to the hinged panel fabricated and installed (another serious omission from the Aires kit)
and here is the model as she looked this morning before i left for work.
hopefully i can finish her up before i go to bed tonight... but no promises!
" TARGET="_blank">http:/[url=http://gallery.kitmaker.net/showphoto.php/photo/342241]
