Oliver,
thanks for the reply! Yes, interior green should be the color to go. As far as I know, the P-36 / A75 was produced in many sub-variants and flew with different engines. Whereas your kit is providing the P&R 1830-Twin Wasp the cowling is correct for Mohawks I-III. Changes are made for the bigger P&R 1820 (Mohawk IV). Even a Allison-V-1710 was used (as prototype for the P-40).
So, don`t worry. Looks like they flew in various combinations from different licensed manufacturers and choice of customers.
Thomas

Hi all,

interesting models around there !

Here is mine,which is on the way to home ..... eager to see the postman !!!!



cheers
nico

Accurate Miniatures 1:48 P-51A Mustang

I made a start finally, washing all the plastic and scrubbing the resin with an old toothbrush to prep everything for paint. I plan to add quite a bit of work to the basic AM kit for this build. I am taking inspiration from several photos of 1st ACG Mustangs that are out there, this will be anything but a clean aircraft when she's done.




Photos found on Google for informational purposes.

I picked this kit up some time ago on Ebay quite cheaply. Its prior owner warned he had started doing some preliminary painting but hadn't put anything together yet. It also included the True Details cockpit set, so I figured what the heck and took a chance.


It was just as advertised, nothing assembled and most of these parts will be replaced with resin so the paintwork doesn't matter.


This will have to be redone, as it is totally wrong. The wheel well should be aluminum with the rear spar in zinc chromate primer.


The resin that came with it was actually where I came across a problem. Notice anything wrong here? Where the heck is the right sidewall! Oh well, True Details' quality control failed this set but it was still a good deal.

I shelled out for a new True Details set. This one came in there new packing and was cast in grey rather than cream. Fortunately it did not suffer from missing parts, everything was included. In addition to the True Details set, I have picked up a number of additions for the Accurate Miniatures line of kits I plan to pick and choose from. I have Verlinden's Alison Engine for the kit; their P-51A Upgrade Set which has another cockpit set, a gunbay, and positionable flaps; both Barracudacals and Eduard's P-51 wheels; and an Ultracast early-style seat with molded harness. Plenty to work with.


All sorts of goodies to choose from.

The engine set is very nice, and looks easy to use. There are very few modifications to make to the plastic, it basically just replaces the nose sections from the kit. Verlinden have put a lot of detail into the engine, it shouldn't need much more work except maybe some wiring added to it.


Verlindin P-51 Alison Engine for Accurate Miniatures kit.

The P-51A Upgrade Set is not as nice in my opinion. The resin is all very well cast but there are issues with the details they have added. The seat looks to be the plywood version that was very common in the P-51B, but I have yet to see that type in an -A model. Same goes for the armor plate, it has the first aid kit molded in as is commonly seen in -B models. I have never that feature in an -A. I will likely not make use of much cockpit detail from this set, and just use the gunbay and flaps.


Verlinden P-51A Uprade Set, minus the seat and armor plate.

The wheels are a toss up, either set is superb and a vast improvement over the kit plastic. Really it just comes down to which tread pattern I want to go with.


Eduard vs Barracudacals. Too close to call on quality of detail, but Barracudacals does edge Eduard out due to price and the availablilty to choose 3 tread patterns: oval (here), daiamond, or block treads.

With all of these aftermarket sets I ended up with 4 different seats to choose from. I will be using Ultracast's seat as it matches my references in the Valiant Wings book. The True Details and Verlinden seat look more appropriate for a P-51B.


Kit seat, Ultracast, Verlinden, and True Details seats, although the pic is a bit blurry for some reason.. The differences between Ultracast and the other two resin options are rather obvious though. The plywood style seat does not look correct at all to me.

The armor plate is a detail TD did get correct over Verlinden. It should be a clean two-piece affair with a small overlap, the first aid kit isn't appropriate for this version.


Close but no cigar, Verlinden.

That brings me to one final detail I needed to source: the bazooka rocket tubes. I have some spares from a Tamiya P-47 that are really sharp and crisp, but the mounts are not correct for a P-51. Rather than scratch my own, I decided to just steal them out of a Hasegawa P-51D kit. This gave me proper mount rails and had the added bonus of making them easy to locate. I just made a template out of heavy painter's tape using Hasegawa's hole locations as my guide. It made it simple to drill the wings.


The Hasegawa tubes are not as clean as Tamiya's, but I'd rather fix those ejector marks than scratch build mounting brackets.

That's all for now. I plan to start shooting paint this week while I work on building a lot of the tiny sub-assemblies on my ZM Ho 229 project.

Hello PeeJay,
very nice kick-off! There really is a huge amount of aftermarket products that will truly make an exceptional model. Keep on posting!

Nicolas,
this kit is really interesting, please tell me more about it, when it arrives!

Thomas,
I just bought the book of Phil Listemann, he resumes that only Mk.IV flew in Burma! So we have to do some Nose-operation .

Oliver

Hi all,

it arrived !



@ Oliver: it's a nice kit, the box says it's a "level 1" difficulty and i agree; it looks like an "easy" kit which could be recommended to a newbe, thanks to Airfix to sale such kits which could attract young (and old as well)rookies to our hobby !

So here is the kit :













I'm just disappointed that the seat belts are not engraved in the seat nor are in the stencils...



So began yesterday evening





The kind of antenna (?) had to be removed










I added Tamiya light grey primer but no pic available yet..

cheers
nico

Nice starts here! I have a couple of other projects to finish up and then I'll have to decide on either my 1/32 P-51A (without all of Paul's add-ons, I'm sorry to say) or B-25H. We shall see...

Michael

Hi all. I'am pleased that my aftermarket sets for building the Ki-84 came in today from Australia. Waiting for the plane to come in next (I hope before Friday). Will make a picture of the start anyhow on Saturday.

Kind regards,

Robert Jan

Ready for a great start.
All collected. Paints, aftermarket and the kit arrived before the start of my holidays.
Hasegawa 1:32 Hayate
Aires cockpit set for Hasegawa Hayate.
Eduard set for masks and extra PE.
Master box Browning set to represent the 12.7 guns.
Quickboost set for exhausts.



Greeting from Thailand and Happy Days to all of you out there.

Robert Jan

Spitfire's cockpit completed, except one length-wise bar:

Hi everyone

Great progress on your builds already!

Aagghhh! - I've been struggling hard not to join this Campaign, but the Force is strong and the will is weak...

It's so tempting to tackle Airfix's recent 1:48 P-40 - especially now that I've come across an old set of Microscale decals in the Stash.

OK! - throwing caution to wind.. I'm in! I'll try to make a start over the Christmas break.

All the best

Rowan

Good man Rowan! We've got to see how this one goes together, it looks like the best shot we've had for an accurate P-40B/C in 1/48 yet!

Michael

Nice choices and good starts guys!

Since my kit has no interior at all I have to completely scratch it (except the seat from spares). Tiny work and and could be better but don't want to waste much time with this P-36. Yesterday I also lost the (useless) canopy while polishing - now have to make my own...


Th mas

Added seatbelts made of tape and a scratched headrest, glued everything in place and close the fuselage...



Th mas

Nice work Thomas!

I am starting a series of campaigns which will cover all the operational theaters of WWII (ETO is next). My plan is to build a different 1/32 P-51 for each theater. So, for this one, I'll be doing the Hobbycraft P-51A:





Unlike Paul, mine will be mostly out of the box. I will be adding Eduard seat belts and, since I got the Tamiya P-51K for Hanukkah and won't be needing the DF loop antenna (which Hobbycraft kindly didn't include) or the early seat, I'll be swiping those:



The Tamiya seat is much nicer than the Hobbycraft one, but also larger, so we'll see how it fits.

Onward and upward!

Michael

Some interesting looking builds in this campaign so I thought I would sign up and join in. I will be building a Lysander from South East Asia Command.



Simon

Simon, I have Eduard's Lysander in stash and its plastic parts are Gavia's. So looking forward to your build -- Gavia is unknown manufacturer to me.

Meanwhile Spitfire is ready for paint:



So far the Eduard kit has been an easy build, filler was needed only between horizontal stabilizers and hull (messy light grey stuff on some other parts is is a thin primer layer applied with brush).

Some progress on the 1/32 P-51A.

Interior fairly light on detail (it's basically the Accurate Miniatures 1/48 kit blown up to 1/32), but the Tamiya seat and Eduard belts dress it up:



My apologies to HobbyCraft, the kit DID come with a DF loop. It just isn't mentioned in the instructions. Nevertheless, the Tamiya one looks better and I think I'll be going with that:



Had to do a quick scratch build for the landing light housing. Using an old light I dug out of the parts bin:



Main airframe together:



After dry fitting the wing to the fuselage I found there would be a very nasty step between the fuselage and top wing halves. So I glued the tops of the wings to the fuselage first to get a good seam there, then added the bottom wing. The inevitable gaps in the leading edge are easier to fix than the step would have been:



Progress will probably slow down from here as I have to go back to work, but I'm fairly happy so far!

Michael

Nice progress, Michael.

Looking forward to see more.

I have a Hasegawa 1/32 scale Zero (old mould) I want to build for this campaign can someone direct me to a set of marking for any Fighter groups operating out of Taiwan? (Formerly Formosa) I've been searching online and there is a ton of material for the attacking Allies but not much on the actual units stationed there.

Please do, the Emperors forces could use some reinforcements for this campaign! While its far from authoratative I compilied This brief list from my Osprey Aces of the Rising Sun (Sakaida 2002) of naval fighter units based on or fighting over Formosa; Tainan AG/251st, 254th,221st,256th,203rd and 205th. This isnt confined to any period of time and I excluded 1 or 2 that specifically used other a/c types.

Ive finally have some progress of my own to report. The cockpit of my Ki-43-I is complete and will be assembled soon, never to see sunlight again!

With such a tiny opening and such scant references I kept it pretty basic opting only to add the excellent SBS models hayabusa seat and etched belt set. I could have made something pretty nice out of the kit seat parts but nowhere this level of crispness, which will be very visible. The rest is as Hasegawa intended. (As a side note the posts on either side of the seatback must be trimmed to fit your cockpit.)

After the usual confusion faced my most curious about Japanese aircraft colors, I decided to go with the dark blue gray cockpit color for. I got creative with some tamiya paint and came up with my base color, then dry brushed with 2 lighter shades. With a multitude of black boxes I painted them various dark grays and blacks to keep it from being to dull. Various acylics and floquil old silver picked out the details before a gloss cost followed by a black future was and then a flat coat. Instruments were lightly colored with a prisma colored white pencil before getting micro kristal klear lenses. Ill be gluing this all up later today or tomorrow.

Next items to be worked on are the engine/exhausts and closing up the combat flaps which are intended to be built extended, which isnt natural for a parked Hayabusa

Okay I think I've got the tail codes sorted I will need some aftermarket decals to get them though. So I'm in with the Hasegawa A6M5 in 1/32 scale. I'm going to wire the ignition harness to add a little detail as it will be very visible. And that's where after looking at some images of the Sakae I realised that the the ignition leads are actually one above the other rather than side by side as you might see on a Wasp or a cyclone radial. So my first order of business is to rework the ignition ring which shouldn't be too hard. It's just a round ring so I'll have to add the attachments for the leads.

Hi guys.
Started with the Ki 84 Hayate as from the Christmas holidays. Really enjoy the Hasegawa kit. I will try to keep up on this kit for the next months. Now looking for some nice came to go with this bird. Hyper scale gave me some nice options for operational planes from the late days of war.

The Engine.



Making the best out of 2 aftermarket sets to combine. Quickboost & Eduard. Plumbing is from fine wires I have from my work.



Test fit to the fuselage with Quickboost exhausts installed.



Cockpit. Though not finished yet looks fine to me. Read a lot about the specs when it comes to colors. I ordered a paint set from AK. Made a mix with someone layers of black undercoating from Mr. Paint. Followed by Nakajima and Mitsubishi green for interior color.

Comments and advise are very welcome as I'm no expert. Like to build much more Japanese stuff, so eager to learn.

Kind regards,

Robert Jan

Wow,
lots of great things happened in this thread since I visited the last time.

Nicolas:
Thank You very much for giving a detailed view on the kit. It looks really nice.

Pasi:
Your Spitfire comes together very well! Looking forward to see the first paint on the fuselage!

Thomas:
Excellent scratch built cockpit. How did You get the instruments glasses on the cockpit?

Michael:
Nice progress. Your fixing for the gap is inspiring. Never thought of this before. Next time I have this problem, I will go for Your method.

Mike:
Outstanding performance in the cockpit. Painting and shading/weathering are spot on. Too sad, the fuselage has to be closed.

Robert:
Engine and interior look very well, as well. The Hayate is one of my favourite Japanese aircrafts!

Oliver

Now, time for the first pics of my Mohawk.

First, I cut off the old raised panel lines and rescribed most of them.


As I have read, only Mohawk IV were flown in Burma. Hence, I had to cut off the old engine compartment and add a bigger one with the wright cyclone engine.


Black outlined is the shape of the actual P-36A and white lines represent the Mohawk IV.

Luckily, I found an old not well build B-17C of Academy in my cellar and took one engine and cowling of this one.



This one seems to fit very nicely. I just have to make the round shape of the cowling a bit more oval.

But next will be the cockpit area.

Oliver

Very nice work going on here!

Mike: Very good looking cockpit. Well done on the paint and detailing!

Robert Jan: To give a better inpression, could you enlarge the photos?

Michael: Nice office and proper progress.

Oliver: Thanks! You do very well on the Mohawk. Removing & rescribing the raised details is something I won't do on mine (it's there as well)-chapeau! I'm curious how you'll fix the cowling shape to oval without losing the diameter and equal thickness? As for the question about the dials - I used my trusty "Swiss Beading Tool" ( look here first item).

Made a little progress as well, news coming up...
Th mas