Dragon 1/32 "early" P-51D Mustang

Carsenault

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Joined
May 7, 2009
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845
Hey guys...

Started this kit about a week ago. I am really inspired by a bunch of great /32 Mustang builds happening now at ARC by a number of builders. Been slow going but I finally have enough pics to show a little progress. The kit is Dragon's 1/32 P-51D-5NA kit (P-51D Early Production), to that I'm adding some decals from BarracudaCals for the famous "Lou IV" of the 361st. Fighter Group, the lead aircraft in this picture...

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This has always been one of my favorite Mustangs. I love the contrast of the bare metal and painted areas.

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This build will basically be a leadup to an eventual build of the Tamiya 1/32 kit. I dont want to go too much into interior detail with this kit, just basically trying out a few new techniques and practice my bare metal finish using Alclad II. I do have a set of Eduard's cockpit placards which I will use to help buzy up the cockpit.

This kit came out a few years before Tamiya's. While it had lots of detail, not all of it is accurate. Some fit issues have been noted and the panel lines and rivet detail is really over done, especially on the wings. The initial Dragon Mustang kits were for the late P-51Ds and had consistantly deep panel line trenches on the wings and fuselage and heavy rivet detail too. This kit had the tools slightly modified for the earlier style tail so they toned down the engraved detail on the new fuselage halves. No matter, Ill be filling in most of the lines and rivets on the wings anyways.

I started with the engine. Its not bad detail wise, but nowhere near as nice as the Tamiya engine. Fit is a bit iffy as well. Once assembled, I sprayed a few quick coats of satin black and picked out some detail with some chrome silver paint. I may add some ignition wires later on, but not much else.

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The sidewalls were first painted with MM interior green enamel then some drybrushing of british interior green. Some detail picked out with Nato black, some fading using panzer gray, and a bit of drybrushing. I then added the placards , sealed everything in Future then did an oil wash. The IP was painted with nato black, then I used the kit instrument decals, added a few placards and picked out some detail with white and red. Finally a drop of Future over each decal to simulate glass. The gun sight was tough to put together. I bought this kit second hand and it didnt have an assembly guide so I copied one online from Hobbysearch.com. Thier scans are not very clear so I had to do a lot of guessing with the orientation of some smaller parts. This gunsight is made up of about 8 small parts. I still have the reflector glass to attach late ron in the assembly sequence.

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The cockpit floor wasnt too bad. base coat of interior green. I then hand painted the plywood sections with Tamiya dark yellow, then a thin brushing of raw umber oil paint to simulate the wood grain. The actual plywood floors were painted black so I did the same but not before a few coats of hairspray so I could scuff the floor later. I finished up with detail painting of the aft fuel tank and radio frame. The radio and battery are just dryfitted here. One odd thing I discovered os the kit supplied photo etch radiator screens are much wider than the space they are supposed to occupy. I had to trim a couple of millimetres off the sides and upper edge so it would fit in place. 2 pieces of radiator mesh are supplied, but only the back of the rad is visible so I only used the one section.
The seat and armor plating look pretty good actually, missing a little detail but definitely looks the part, especially with the added photoetch braces and harnesses.

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Very nice Charlie, who doesnt love a Stang! ;D'

Like what you did with the floor , looks very cool, keep the updates coming.
 
very nice indeed I will have to get me one of those I have a 1/48 stang I am working on but would like to get a 1/32 I like the details of that kit.
 
arohk said:
very nice indeed I will have to get me one of those I have a 1/48 stang I am working on but would like to get a 1/32 I like the details of that kit.

This kit is nice, but spend the extra money on a Tamiya 1/32 Mustang instead, you wont be dissapointed.
 
Nice work Charlie :) ....really tempted to break out the SWS kit !! ...must resist :(

Chris.
 
WayneBt said:
so come on Charlie, where is the progress??

Sanding and filling, filling and sanding... repeat if neccesary.

Been busy filling the panel lines and rivets on the wing surfaces. The top wing is done, the bottom needs more work.
 
Carsenault said:
arohk said:
very nice indeed I will have to get me one of those I have a 1/48 stang I am working on but would like to get a 1/32 I like the details of that kit.

This kit is nice, but spend the extra money on a Tamiya 1/32 Mustang instead, you wont be dissapointed.

Thanks fo letting me know about the Tamiya one that is really nice and the price is really not to much higher but has alot more detail to it.
 
Nice work Charlie.The detail painting in the cockpit looks perfect. Looking forward to the next update.
 
Well the fuselage is closed up now. I havent placed the exhaust stacks on yet because Im a bit concerned with the way theyll fit through the cowling. After a test fit, the exhaust ports dont seem to match up right with the openings in side panels... Also, the cowling wont sit flush either, so I may opt to have at least one glued in place.

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The wings were assembled next, I forgot to take pictures however. They weren't a great fit, especially around the wing root extention. If I were to do another one of these, I would first sand down the walls of the wheel wells. Most of the fit problem was from the ceiling of the gear well interfering with the upper wing parts. I also took the opportunity at this time to fill in the panel lines and most of the rivet detail on the wings surfaces. These were puttied over and painted silver at the factory to help reduce drag over the wing, increasing not only speed, but also endurance and payload capacity. The Mustang could carry almost as much external stores as the bigger P-47 Thunderbolts. The panel lines and rivets would begin to re-appear after a little while due to wear and tear.

Next came the marriage of the wing and fuselage... Fit problems seen to follow one another. The bad fit of the wings is affecting the fit of the wings to the fuselage. I had to thin out the parts quite a bit to get everything together... plus use super glue to hold the last seam in place. Glad I bought a new tube of putty last summer, gonna use a lot of it on this build.

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some more progress to report.

The engine covers (cowling) is molded in 2 halves and in clear plastic. Why they bothered to make the panels clear is a mystery to me since they put a satin texture so all you can see through it is blurry shapes and colors, kinda like looking through the bottom of a beer mug. :p
I was hoping to be able to have the covers removable but the fit wasnt that tight so In the end I decided to permanantly attach the covers. Im not overly dissapointed, like I said before, this is more of a practice run before I start on the Tamiya Mustang sometime next year. I did salvage the upper ignition cable, I want to use that as a pattern to scratch build my own for the big T.

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I then primed the kit using Tamiya fine white spray. I decanted a few ounces to do the smaller bits like the external tanks, landing gear parts and control surfaces. I really should have used a gloss black enamel instead but I was in a hurry and didnt want to wait a few weeks for the paint to cure. Tamiya primers dry to the touch within minuted and can be sanded easily about 30 minutes later. I use a 2400 grit sanding pad to sand out the primer.

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For the bare metal area, Im using Alclad II laquers. its the first time I have used them on a hole model and not just for detail parts. I used thier "aluminium (alc101)" for the gear bay doors, control surfaces, drop tanks and wheel halves. They covered the white primer nicely. Then for contrast, I went with "airframe aluminium (alc119)" for the fuselage and tail. It took me a whole bottle to cover that area. I dont know if I was doing something wrong or if it was just a bad batch, I was jus not getting any coverage out of it. I debated priming over all that and starting over but today it occured to me that the regular aluminium covered beautifully. So after I painted the wings using Tamiya chrome silver, I went over the fuselage with regular aluminium and got great coverage. Go figure. After that I got inspired and masked off a few panels here and there and used various shades by Alclad to achieve some tonal variation. I cant wait to try that out on the Tamiya Pony. Gonna let it cuer a few days before I start my topside camoflage.

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Dude, I know you have been putting a TON of work into this kit and it is definitely showing in the results!!! A 1/32 P51 Mustang is on my list to add to my stash!!! You may influence me to pick it up sooner than I was planning though.

Keep up the great work!
 

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