F-51D & P-51D Dual Build WIP #2

Onwards with the Mustangs build, and this has gone very quick so far especially on one of them. I will start with the RAF P-51 first in this post. After I had primed it up, I was glad to see that the time spent lining up the fuselage halves paid off and no further work was needed to deal with any visible join lines on her. Painting now started with spraying a few light coats of Xtracrylix's XA1006 RAF Ocean Grey over the top half of the model. Once this was dry, I laid out the camouflage pattern using blutac worms. I decided to play dangerously and not mask off the grey areas with tape, take the risk of spraying around them instead. So, light coats of XA1110 Forest Green at a lowish pressure were carefully done. This was about 80% successful, only a few slight over-sprays occurring which were touched up freehand after the worms were removed. The top half was now masked off and the lower half was sprayed with XA1015 RAF Lt Aircraft Grey before giving the model a couple of coats of Alclad's Aqua Gloss clear. This stuff goes down really smooth over the Xtracrylix paints.

On this kit, there is only a few decals supplied as it is one of Airfix's starter sets. So it did not take too long to put them all on. The instruction said to paint the propeller all over black, but I found in some photos that this squadron painted the prop hubs red. So I went over the hub with some white primer and the brush painted it with a few coats of matt red paint. 

After giving the model another coat of Alclad clear, it was time to start weathering her. First I started by giving a wash over the panel lines with some Flory/Promodeller black wash then wiped it off the following morning. Next I added some oil stains and streaks using Mr Hobby's oil colour paint. Next I started to add some soot stains around the exhausts, guns and cartridge jettison holes under the wings . First I used some Mr Hobby's soot colour, followed by soot colour weathering powders from Carrs. The fuselage was then finished off with a coat of matt clear to seal the wash and powders.

I decided to try out the super fabric seatbelts from Eduard on these Mustangs. A set were ordered along with sets of RAF early and late, and Luftwaffe fighter belts from Hannants. For this scale, these are ideal and so much easier to use then etched ones. They look great and were fitted in a matter of a few minutes. They suggess to use white PVA glue to secure the belts in place, but I just used some thinned down matt clear for the job instead. Plus it dried quicker then the PVA.

Just a little mishap with the original kit aerial, it broke whilst I was cleaning it up. So I scratch-built one from a piece of plastcard, which ended up being a lot stronger then the kit one. You can also see in the below photo the aerial cable running through the cockpit canopy, just as the real aircraft.

This was a record for me, completed the model in a week, and the F-51 is also at the decal stage (will post on this one tomorrow). This is a lovely model to build. There was no problems with it, except for the delicate joystick and aerial. It assembled up without any trouble and everything was clean without flash or misaligned panel lines. In all, a great kit. Once the F-51 is finished, I have two more P-51D's in my stash, I did not realise that there was another one of these starter set Mustangs there to. The kit cannot be faulted, well done Airfix, can't wait to see what the Vampire I have is like to build! So here are the photos of the finished model.