Chris,
By all means, tag along for the ride. Just be forewarned though, my builds are a bit like waking the dog, they are not the shortest or most efficient method of getting from start to finish. It took me a minute to figure out the "Brooks" reference though, then I remembered the box for painting/decaling support. I've used generations of shoe boxes with appropriate holes cut in them to support my aircraft. I don't run much any more, but I do walk as really really fast as I can though. My style of running is closer to a plod in any event, and at this point in my life, if I hit the pavement for any amount I'll gimp up some joint or other, then I'm laid up for two weeks or so, which defeats to whole purpose of running. On the Academy P-38, I heartily recommend them. The fit isn't perfect, but it's also not that bad either. There's enough detail to do a respectable model out out of the box, that at the end of the day looks like a P-38. Or if your so bent, it's a good base for some extra detailing. I'll refer you over to Joel's P-38 build as an idea of what can be done. And keep running, it'll pay dividends later, if you do it in moderation.

I'm too old to run these days. But I "power walked" 2 1/2 miles every day to help loose 65 lbs. Once this damn artic cold weather leaves, I'm going to go back to it again. I do miss it. My wife thought I was nuts because I buy running sneakers which aren't exactly cheap, as it's important to look the look, if you're walking the walk.
Joel

I was going to move on to the cockpit and topside, but since I've got the landing gear mostly done I figure I'll take a detour there first.



This is the best shot of the landing gear on any of the 8th PRS planes I've seen and all the rest show the same type wheels and tires. Not evident in this photo, but others show all three wheels are of the capped type with "bald" tires. The Academy kit provides both (spoked?) and capped type wheels. The tires are another matter however, you do get the bald type which are appropriate for the E-model P-38, but they are made of soft vinyl type plastic, which after copious amounts of sanding to get the sprue gates and mold ridges off, look sorta ok.



I did find an aftermarket set that has the proper tires and wheel cover mix, but they want the princely sum of $10 for three damn 1/48 scale tires! Now my Scots' heritage kicks in (Aye Angus, ya could mount the damn thing on three sheep and be done with it!) I could "weather" it up a bit I suppose and it might work some, but no matter how I cut it, they're mediocre at best. After all the work in the wheel wells, and then stick in on these. (a bit like putting lipstick on a pig, and then dressing her in burlap) I've just about talked myself into those $10 wheels.

The changes to the gear struts themselves amount to some 28 gauge
craft wire for hydraulic lines and hose and some very small fittings to mount the lines. Unfortunately the camera I use and the lighting doesn't do well on extreme closeups. A thin strip of metal foil with a small hole drilled was superglued to the scissors on the main gear legs to run the brake hose through before eventually going into the (as yet) undetermined wheel. Another mount bracket was glued to the top of the scissors to approximate the reference photos:





All of these shots are from the Cybermodeler P-38 reference section.

The only change to the nose gear strut was the addition of the two small pieces of 28 gauge craft wire to replicate the short section of tubes on the front of the gear for the shimmy dampener.



To their credit, Academy attempted to replicate this but their attempt amounted to a lip just below what is the small reservoir in the photo. I snipped the front of the lip off and sanded it smooth. Then I drilled 4 small holes and inserted two "U" shaped pieces of craft wire for the tubes. This was a much more fiddly chore than I anticipated since the ends of the U's wouldn't go into the correct holes, everything was too close together. I have no idea how the ship modelers do the things they do.

I also went for AM wheels and tires. $10 got me the Ultra Cast 3 wheel set. They look really quite good once painted and weathered.
Joel

Now on to the top of the matter at hand. Upon closer investigation the cockpit was not as substandard as I first feared. A lot of the underwhelming impression was caused by a lack of any dark wash to give the general detail some depth. A little burnt umber was judiciously slathered around (that's close to an oxymoron) and then drybrushed as carefully as possible so as not to screw-up too much of the existing good detail work. I had to go back and redo some of the black boxes, but all in all not bad. These are a couple of shots from the Squadron/Signal P-38 In Action book, No. 1109. I'm not sure if this is the most current version at this point, but it is definitely far superior to their older version. This one has a goodly amount of detail photos of all of the major variants.





Of note here is the rear canopy section on the early model P-38s and some detail of the radio/accessory deck behind the pilots seat armor. On the rear canopy, unlike later versions which appear to be composed of left and right plexiglass panels which are mounted in a metal frame that runs fore and aft along the top of the canopy, the early canopies appear to be composed of three curved plexiglass sections glued together. The kit canopy reflects the later type with the spine down the top. Fortunately Academy understated this feature on the kit piece and it isn't all that noticeable. My first idea to replicate this was possibly using narrow pieces of scotch tape. I then realized that in both pictures we're looking through the sections at a steep angle. Most of the apparent width is due to the thickness of the plexiglass. Even thin tape strips would have been a hassle due to the compound curves involved, so in the end I opted to lightly scribe two lines into the canopy to give the impression of three pieces. very fine copper and craft wire was used to replicate the radio wires etc. A short section of styrene rod was used for the slanted brace/(antenna guide?) that runs from the back of the seat armor to the rear of the cockpit.







The True Details seat is a vast improvement over the kit part, but you do have to deal with the molded in seatbelts. Along with the lackluster paint job on the cockpit done some years ago, I did the preliminary paint work on the seatbelts. The shoulder harnesses had a neutral grayish base coat but still needed some light gray drybrushing to get them to look right. I haven't used liquid mask in years, I got fed up with it shrinking while drying on canopies and the like and decided to use tape almost exclusively since. In my doterage I thought maybe the stuff wasn't as bad as I remembered and recently got a new bottle. Now it's time to drybrush the harness, and I know there is no way I'll keep the paint on those narrow belts, hence having to touch-up the surrounding seatback. Then I get a brainstorm, why don't I just brush a little of the liquid mask on either side of the harness and the gap between, and avoid all the touch-up. Obviously not much rational thought or reflection was going on at this point. On it goes, let dry overnight. Next day I launch into my drybrush and detailing on the seatbelts, liquid mask works as advertised, no collateral damage, great! Now it's time to remove the mask, oops, no way this stuff is going to peal off the dullcoat cockpit paint. Great, now I've got to try and paint over the mask (which may show anyway) and then need to touch-up the belts again to boot. I an burst of inspiration (desperation actually) I dimly remembered that this stuff might be water soluble. Off to the sink with an old tooth brush and some soapy water. A couple of scrubs later and low and behold no mask! Gadzooks! couldn't have worked better if I'd planned it. You might want to try this at home, but I'd pick something something nice and obscure, like the largest most prominent thing in your cockpit, jeeze! It is true, fortune smiles on drunks and idiots.







At this point I can't think of any reason to keep the booms and wings separate so I'll see how that goes. Surprisingly well as it turned out. On this version anyway, the engine nacelles matched the front of the wing very well, and there was only a slight mismatch between the trailing edge and the booms.





This shot is of the boom/trailing edge join, which is a little more pronounced that the picture would indicate. The wing portion is slightly wider than the boom on both sides, with the left side (on the aircraft) being marginally worse. But all in all, for a P-38 kit, I've seen worse. It's all quite accessible and should just be a few minutes of easy sanding.

Oops, missed one!



This is the boom wing join.

I keep on wishing that I didn't do my P-38 build till after yours. I could have "borrowed" all your detailing that I neglected on mine, like wiring up the electrical boxes behind the seat, instead of staying focused on just the all look for a NMF which only came out just fair.

Top engine boom to wing fit looks great. How is the fit on the bottom? That's where I had some issues and needed to use Green Stuff.

Joel

Joel,
This is the view from the underside for the boom/engine nacelle to wing join. On the left boom there is just this slight ridge where the boom is a little narrower than the wing. The inside of the right boom is just about spot on. You'll notice there is a slight radius difference between the wing section and the boom where they meet.



This is the corresponding shot from the opposite side. Outside of the right boom join (closest to camera) is almost perfect. On the left boom there is just the barest hint of a little overlap of the boom to the wing. In both booms, the slight mismatch is due to trying to equalize out the slight differences on the top of the wing/boom.



The last shot shows the slight shape difference between the top of the wing and the booms. Slight but noticeable. There's nothing on these early P-38s that requires any major putty. I suspect your issues were do to Academy's rework of the booms/nacelles for the later model P-38s. They apparently threw the baby out with the bathwater on this one.

Again I've dropped a photo.



This is that top shot.

Wow, what a difference in fit between your release and the version I had. Like I said, I had issues with the lower side of the wing fuselage. Then again, it could have been me. The end result is what counts, and it looks near on perfect once I primed it.

Joel

DMiller,
Nice to see you once again around Aeroscale. I was wondering what happened to you and your P-38 Photo Recon build. You were making excellent progress, then you stopped posting. Did you ever finish the build?
Joel

I use the a rotating leather punch for some things, like you, and a Waldron punch set for others. I think Roll Models sells them.

Joel,
The F4 build is alive and well, just progressing slowly for the last couple of months. It's been a combination of weather, home projects, a trip to the Great Northeast Kleptocracy (upstate NY) and a sprinkling of general sloth. I've also been switching off between the F4 and my AT-11 build on the twin-seater/training campaign which has gotten a little more attention lately. There has been progress though. The primer-sand-primer routine has been accomplished and the basic P-38E paint scheme is applied.









I'm taking the same tract that I think Lockheed took, which is to pull the required number of P-38's off the line and make the required changes for the F4. In conjunction with this it appears from the 8th PRU photos that an early version of the synthetic haze camo scheme was applied over the standard paint. This shot of the 8th embarked on the USS President Coolidge in March '42 seems to explain a lot about the rather mottled appearance of their aircraft.



I suspect that the tape weather-proofing was applied panel seams very shortly after the application of the lighter over spray. A month or so at sea in the tropics and you remove the weather stripping and this is what you get:





I have a fiendishly cunning plan M'lord. Which is where I'm at now. The plan is to tape off the panel lines which is what was done originally and give the underside a good overspray of light gray (FS36622 or thereabouts), pull the masking and then give it another very light overspray of flat white. Looking at the original photos seems to indicate some of the "haze" paint was pulled up with the tape as opposed being applied after the masking was done. Hence the second lighter overspray. Sounds good in theory anyway. Time will tell.

Brian,
I finally picked up one of those pin-punch sets (after lo-these many years) from UMC I think, had occasion to use it on a couple of items on the AT-11 build, and as usual with such things, wish I'd done it decades ago.
Carry on.

DM,
The paint camo scheme is outstanding. And your plan of attack to duplicate the masking/weathering sounds like the perfect solution.

I rarely check in on campaigns I'm not in, and I rarely join them these days. Those I do, I do a duel posts in the appropriate era forum. My F-15C was also for the National Pride campaign. It's really hard to follow individual builds in a campaign as everyone's build is just another post.

Needless to say, I'm glad that you never left, but rather hung out with a different crowd .

As for that punch set, I bought one as well, and it's one of my most valuable tools. I also bought the UMM #1 Scriber, and it's the best one I've used to date, but I still struggle with scribing. Old age, poor eye sight, and some shaking doesn't add up to the best human tools for scribing.

You can find my latest build this forum. It's the 1/32 scale Czech F2A-3 Buffalo. And it's a real challenge to say the least.

Joel

I must say, DM, I am super impressed with your research. That picture of the A/C on the transport is pure gold.

Oops!
I just got done doing some duplicate removal in my uploads on Photobucket and noticed a couple of the ones I jettisoned must have been linked to this post. These are the relinks:









It's been a while since my last post, a nasty 1:1 scale flooring project at the casa got in the way. Unfortunately my table saw shares the dungeon with my modeling suite, and I found many many years ago, that if your a modeler, sawdust is NOT your friend. So I had the F4 project bagged (literally and figuratively) for the duration. Now back to our story. As of the previous post, I sprayed the standard olive drab over neutral gray P-38E scheme and put a glossy future floor wax coat on that prior to decaling. Since I'm guessing that the camo scheme on these early recon planes was a form of the Synthetic Haze pattern designed to lighten up the aircraft when viewed from below.



This shot shows a much lighter underside but still showing some of the original "standard" camo scheme underneath. This shot of some later model F4's (note the redesigned camera windows) but essentially the same camo.



This was what I based my color selection selection on. On my monitor it appears the shot tends a bit towards the blue, due in part to the lighting of the original picture. Hence my selection of a light coat of Model Master FS36622 which is a little darker than the standard calls for (it's a real close match to 36595), and then a thin overcoat of flat white to mottle it a bit more. Since this is a pretty complex (for me anyway) camo scheme and requires some subtle shading I thought it best to do the gloss coat and decals prior to the "haze" application. I know that the various layers of gloss coats and flat coats can do some strange things to the colors. This idea, along with some ancient decals, is going to come back and bite me right where it hurts, but I get ahead of myself. That's the plan anyway. The next step is to do just like the crew back in '42 did, and mask off all the seams prior to embarking on the President Cooledge. This only takes about 3 miles of masking tape cut in the form of 1/20 inch strips. I used to have a lifetime supply of chartpak tape squirreled away for just such emergencies, but unfortunately the chartpak tape lifetime started in the mid 1970's and the adhesive part of the tape gave up the ghost a decade or so ago. So the fallback position was a scale, ex-acto knife and a lot of cutting. All that cutting, and Zen-like perseverance following every panel line I could find resulted in this:





With that done I next cut some circle masks for the national insignia. I used a circle template to get the diameter needed and did the math to get the radius and went at it with a blade in a drafting compass. I dampened out the tape adhesive by repeated applications to various hairless body parts to a point I thought it would just hold but leave the decal in place.

This was after the initial light gray coat:





I let the gray dry a bit and then gave in a light shot of flat white to mottle things a bit more. I let things sit overnight and then pulled the masking tape.







After the tape was removed I gave it another light shot of flat white to soften up the tape lines a bit.











The shots with the missing national insignia are the final application of the over spray. It's a bit hard to see in the photos due to reflection, but there is a fairly good mottle on the underside, which with some weathering should do the trick. I was able to get almost all the old decals off and will try a little micro-sol on the last bits and try a re-application with hopefully better decals. We're getting there.
Carry on.

DM,
Your translation of research pictures to model is dead on. I can only imagine how long it must have taken to cut and lay down all that tape.

It's hard for me to see the gray underside mottling effect on my monitor, but what I can see of it, it does look to have that realistic overall view to it.

Joel

In spite of seemingly innumerable delays and distractions the F4 build stumbles along. The decaling and weathering process has fought me every inch (approx. 2.3cm) of the way. I decided to use the fuel filler markings on top of the wing just to add a bit of color to break up the vast expanse of OD on the top. The kit ones were a bit crude and were of questionable quality at this point, so I used some from an old Microscale sheet. The look a lot better but I had the devil's own time getting them to lay down acceptably. This was a case of old decals and less than smooth surface. I sprayed Pledge floor polish overall after painting but probably should have gone with a couple of extra coats in hindsight. I am also a little suspicious of the new formula for the polish. In the past I've used Future floor wax, which Pledge is suppose to be the same with a new name, but I suspect otherwise. With Future, I'd apply my decals and setting solutions and would get a milky reaction from the polish until it dried and then it would revert to clear, and I could press on from there. This stuff got milky and stayed that way in some areas. I had to go after it with ammonia to get it off and recover the area. In the reference photos the small plane-in-group numbers on the nose were not the standard USAAF block type lettering.



I got casting around looking for something that would fill the bill. It dawned on me that these photos were taken in northern Australia and maybe they used local stencils. A bit more research revealed that sure enough, these look an awfully lot like RAAF/RAF serial numbers. A search of the decal stash turned up an old Xtradecal sheet of RAF style serial numbers that were just about perfect, and to add icing to it, they still work. This is the current state of the beast.







When I pulled the canopy mask I found to my dismay that the liquid glue I'd used on the front windscreen had flowed up under the tape on both side panels and pretty badly crazed the plastic.
This was the result on both sides:



It took some judicious sanding with a mix of wet&dry sandpaper from about 320 grit up to 12000 grit to get this result:



The sanding process left some deposits between the windscreen and the instrument panel cover that took some inventive cleaning to get out, even at that I wasn't able to get all of the residue. I'm hoping that my paint touch-up will cover most of what was left. My next issue it the turbo-superchargers on top of the booms. This is a part of the aircraft that seldom shows up in any detail in photos. I finally came across this shot from a book of period color photos "Fighter Command" by Ethell & Sand, which is a treasure trove of WW II color aircraft photographs.



This shows to good effect the exhaust staining around the aft portion of the superchargers. I'm not at all sure just what is going on with some of the color in this shot, the excess blue may be a result of the film used or the lighting, but why is it in some places and not others (note wing top between fuselage and engine booms, or sides of tail and booms) blue paint?

This caught my eye while looking at the photo:



Note the side window in the down position. This is one of the early P-38's (E model or early F model) with the side opening top hatch. I had always assumed the right side canopy was fixed on these early birds and the top hatch was hinged to them. I did wonder just how this worked due to the curved shape of the top hatch. Now I know, the top hatch was hinged to the fore and aft canopy frames and independent of the side hatch. This may make life a little easier. This is my preliminary work on trying to simulate the exhaust staining.



This is pastel chalk mixed with water with a drop of detergent to break the surface tension and dabbed on with a brush. Now to see what it looks like after it dries and I work it some more with a dry brush. More later.
Carry on.

DMiller,
Glad to see that you're still making progress on the F4. You certainly nailed the tapping effect on the top and bottom of the paint scheme. Weathering effects really blended everything nicely together.

I never did any exhaust staining on my P-38, so I'm really interested in how yours comes out, as I plan on building another one in the more traditional OD/NG scheme.

I'm surprised that you had that windscreen fogging issue from the liquid glue. I use just a few drops of Tamiya Extra Thin and let the capillary action draw it around. Never had any issues. Did you do all that sanding and polishing with the windscreen still glued in place? I can't imagine how you managed that.

I use pledge quite a lot, and really don't have any issues with it. Like any other clear, the paint surface needs to be as smooth as you can prepare it. I do that with 8,000 & 12,000 micro mesh pads or Mequiar's Scratch X 2.0 for areas I can't get to with a pad. I've also started to rub down the Pledge as well, but I still need to do a better job of it.

Joel

I do believe the end is in sight on this F4 Photo Lightning conversion. If I can manage to get the antenna wires strung without doing any major collateral damage, I'm home free. This shot of a P-38 engine start (also from the Ethell and Sand book) give a fair idea why the turbocharger exhausts look like they did.



This shot isn't even the worst of it, the engine and prop are running and a lot of the exhaust has dissipated. These old reciprocating engines burned leaded 100 octane avgas and not a little engine oil to boot. On an unrelated note, I noticed the cooling flap on the boom is closed and that got me thinking, what is the normal position of these things on the ground? I got to checking some other reference photos and while I saw some both open and closed, the vast majority were closed on the ground unless the engine was running. If I had noticed this earlier in the build I might have considered doing some surgery similar to Joel W's P-38 and closed the things. That would have gone a long way towards solving the see-through issue I ended up with. Food for thought. Anyway pressing on with the exhaust weathering, this is what I came up with to approximate the reference photo.



This was the initial blending on the lighter color. All the the following weathering was done with pastel chalks, some were made into a slurry with water cut with a drop or two of liquid detergent to break the surface tension, and others were applied as a powder.





My technique still leaves a lot to be desired, but I really think that for non-liquid staining these pastels are the way to go. If someone knew what they were doing these can provide some great shading and blending. The top of the booms and along the vertical stabilizers was dusted with a medium gray to show the extended exhaust. Now it was time to put all the extraneous bits that have been kicking around in the box bottom for these last few months and stick them someplace. The wheels are resin replacements for the kit's soft plastic version and may still get a little pastel weathering to some use on a dirt strip. The gears themselves go in pretty well, there are some rather fiddly gear retraction bars that require some care but all in all not bad. The gear doors are a rather precarious affair though with no real secure attachment points and should be approached with caution.





The canopy parts were next, since I have reference photos of the right canopy car door type panel in both the up and down position (see previous photos) I debated on which was to pose it. In the end I decided on going with the up position to; 1-add a little support to the top panel which on this model of the P-39 hinges on the right, and 2-to help me get the top panel in the right position. The framing on these side panels is unbelievably fine and the resulting triangular clear sections were a real pain to mask. I ended up using scotch clear tape so I could trim it right on the clear panel, a touchy process at best. I don't like to use scotch tape as a mask if I can help it due to having the stuff leave adhesive residue on the part which then has to be dealt with, but in this case I had no better alternative. In the end I lucked out and the right side came out pretty well, and I was planning on cutting most of the bottom of the left side off anyway. I painted the entire left side panel in the event I would need to close up the cockpit, but everything else turned out better than the side panel so I showed it in the lowered position. The drop tanks should have been a slam-dunk but weren't due to my not opening up the mount holes in the bottom of the wing when the thing was apart. The wing was glued up a decade or so ago before I had any good plans for this kit, and by the time I realized I'd need drop tanks there was no going back. The flashing over the mount holes showed an ever so slight dimpling under just the right light, so I went at it and drilled my holes. As it turned out, I got the front holes pretty well on target, but the back ones were a little more hit or miss (with emphasis on the miss part) so I had to shave off the rear mount pins on the pylons to be able to get the tanks aligned properly. I have found over the years that your mounting problems increase exponentially with the number of axis you have to deal with, and this was no exception.







I suspect the sharp-eyed viewers out there have noticed that this particular model of P-38 is minus the lower elevator mass balance. It wasn't designed that way (however it was designed very flimsily) and at some point during the yoga exercise I undertook to clean up the mess I made on the canopy, the mass balance departed for parts unknown. Another part of rather dubious attachment is the pitot tube which was originally under the nose on the P-38E, but probably due to installation of the ventral camera's in the nose it was moved to the bottom of the left wing. (where it remained for the rest of the series) I simply spaced it as best I could based on my reference photos and drilled a hole in the bottom of the wing. This piece managed to stay attached to the aircraft, but it took a lot more remembering than I am used to dealing with. Some more almost final shots:



















Carry on

Awesome work, really. I'm going to have to find time to look at this in some detail later.

I've been following your build from day 1, and it's been a most impressive ride for sure. The final results surely speak for themselves.

Your turbo exhaust staining really does have a realistic look to it. That's something that I completely neglected on my build.

The finished model is certainly well documented to support all that you've done, and was a real 1st class education.

Joel

Just stumbled in this thread. Great result of that old Academy kit. Where did you put all the weight?
I'm also working on an Academy P-38right now, but as a fighter, the J-version. I've put some smaller lead balls in the nose and some bigger ones just behind the propellers. That should do it. This 20 years old goody needs a lot of sanding but in the end it's worth all the extra work when you look at the beautiful aircraft on your shelf.

Torsten.
As to the wights, I filled the engine nacells with fishing weights and put in a couple of styrene baffles in behind them to ensure everything stayed in place. There's a picture of the nacells/booms towards the front of the post that shows what I did. Since it is possible to make a temp. insert of the landing gear legs before you have to commit to joining the booms to the wing/fuselage section I'd recommend doing that and see how it sits while you still have a chance to add more weight if necessary. If you booms aren't already together, place a baffle between the coolent radiator openings in each boom. Academy placed a baffle in so you can't see from front to back, but it is possible to look across from the front of one opening and see out the rear on the opposite side. I found out the hard way. Not a big thing but it's there. The boom/wing fit seems to be much better on the early model Academy P-38's than the late model ones. I had very little heavy sanding to do on mine, while Joel W. had a real poor fit on the one he did. In any event take your time lining everything up and try and average out any misfits, also clamps are a must. I haven't done a Hasegawa P-38 so I can't compare, but these Academy kits can turn out a good looking P-38 with a little work.
DR