Hobbycraft 1/32 P-51A
By John Bardwell
This is certainly no Tamiya or Hasegawa kit but the basics are there for anyone who wants to fix it up. I added the Vector cockpit set with Waku seat belts, Eclipse Model Design props, True Details wheels, and Aires wheel well set (supposedly for a P-51B but it's correct for the Allison Mustangs and NOT the '51B). I searched through my Microsoft Office Word to find lettering very close to the original for the name "Barbie". I then scaled it out and printed it on clear decal sheet for laser printers. As it prints out somewhat opaque I went over it with Model Master Chrome Yellow. I did the needed adjustments to a couple of the letters at that time. Paints used were White Ensign Neutral Gray and Dull Dark Green, Xtracolor O.D., and various shades of Testor's Model Master. The white stripes on the fuselage are from a old Scale Master sheet I have in my decal stash but the one's on the tail were masked and painted. After all the painting and decaling was done I oversprayed the whole model with Alclad Klear Kote Flat (the spinner is also Alclad Dark Aluminum). Weathering was accomplished using several shades of "color-adjusted" O.D. and some paint I mixed for "exhaust stains". Also, you can achieve a nice weathered look using the Alclad Flat Kote by varying the thickness of it's application. It wasn't a real difficult build but it did have it's "high cuss-factor" moments. Also, it's far from perfect and there a few things I should have done but I will save those for my A-36 build later on.
© John Bardwell 2014
This article was published on Monday, February 10 2014; Last modified on Monday, February 10 2014