One thing on the P-51, the mid fuselage looks a little gray to me insted of aluminum like the rest of the aircraft. Is that because of the lighting or is it just me?

Tin,

That's one old kit! The NMF looks OK to me, that's a good finish! Keep up the good work - Some critical things you might wish to consider though:

1. The gear legs are too far back - they need to move forward more near the bottom. Check references this is easy to see.

2. The wheels wells should be silver, possibly with a yellow spar ( I have seen photos of P-51Ds with all silver wells including the spar - but never green.

3. The fuselage National Insigna don't go up that high on the fuselage. And the invasion stripes weren't painted under the national insigna. There should be a small gap of silver where they stopped painting the invasion stripes around the insigna and codes (when You put those on) .


4. According to research done by Aviation Artist Wade Meyers - European P-51s didn't carry an antenna wire (that's some good news!).

5. The cockpit should be painted interrior green and it wasn't uncommon for the seat to be painted Dull Dark Green - the fuel cell behind the pilot was a rubber color, but the pit shouldn't be black for a P-51 that has D-Day stripes on it - but they were painted black prior being sent to Korea in the 1950s.

6. As far as photograph - if you are interested I wrote a quick "how to" on how I take photos and put it up on ARC. The only thing I would suggest on the photos is to use blank backgrounds rather than shooting directly off your desktop. This makes it much easier to get more light on the subject, and take clearer pictures. But that is only a suggestion based on what I like - your photos look fine.

http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=12&t=19065&s=20e43b39a1a5999fbeed905c6a67a41b

Regards,
--Frank

Bryan, the pics look great. I haven’t built that kit, but if you say it’s a dog, I’ll believe you. You did a heck of a job on the NMF, though. The different shades on various panels came out well, I thought. I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself. Overall, I think it looks good, given what you had to work with.

Hi Bryan

Certainly no problems with your new photo setup - the results look great.

I agree with Frank's remarks, but would add that the style of invasion stipes did vary quite a lot - I've got photo references for the "squared off" type - just as you've painted them.

One thing I'd say is that the anti-glare panel looks rather bright if it's intended to be Olive Drab, and the instrument shroud would more commonly be black.

On the question of natural metal, I've often read that P-51s left the factory with their wings sealed, primed and painted silver. How long this finish survived on operations (or whether it was purposely scrubbed off by groundcrew!...) is something I've never pinned down.

It's a neat idea to use a cheapo kit to sort out new techniques - something I should try for my own experiments.

Hope the comments help

Rowan

Here's some research help T_C
http://www.cebudanderson.com/
M
M
...hth have fun (:-)