I
am a big fan of flashy WW2 fighters, and not too many came more colorful than
this, ‘Topper III‘, a P-51B Mustang of the 99th FS, 332nd FG, better known
as the ‘Tuskegee Airmen‘. Without going into a full-blown history lesson,
suffice it to say those men did a bang up job during the war. To build this
Mustang, I used Accurate Miniatures’ 1/48 P-51B, and I dressed her in
AeroMaster decals. The kit is beautiful, sporting great fit, good accuracy, and
great detail out of the box. I built
mine almost out of box, with a few minor details added.
Construction
went fairly easily, the only bumps in the road being because of my own goof-ups.
The kit has good accuracy, but if you are a Mustang purist or just more
accuracy-minded, there are a couple of areas that may need attention. A few mods
I made to my Mustang are:
-
Added
aileron fairings on top and bottom of each wing
-
Added
formation lights, top and bottom of each wing
-
Opened
and detailed the canopy
-
Scratch-built
seatbelts and buckles
-
Dropped
the elevators
-
MV
Lenses landing light
-
Gun
camera sight drilled out
Finishing
the model in a natural metal finish, I decided I wanted to try something other
than Testors’ Chrome Silver so I picked up some Alclad II. If you haven’t
heard already, let me be the one to tell you this stuff kicks butt! I finished
my Mustang with Highly Polished Aluminum, so I had to first spray a primer of
gloss black, also supplied by Alclad. You only have to use the primer when
spraying Highly Polished Aluminum or Chrome Silver, so other colors are even
easier to use. The stuff comes ready to airbrush right out of the bottle and
literally dries in minutes, I highly recommend you try this stuff!
Aeromasters’
decals, sheet 48-224, sealed the deal. I sprayed some of the decals with a flat
coat, then trimmed away the clear carrier film and applied them over the
unsealed Alclad, I find this is the best way to do it. A bit of MicroSol was
needed to get the nose checkers to settle around those compound curves, but the
decals otherwise went on very nicely.
To
weather ‘Topper III‘, I used several techniques:
-
silver
color pencil
-
Pigma
Micron 005 Ink Pen
-
black
chalk
-
burnt
raw umber wash
-
dry
brushing
This
was a fun build, and the finished model is stunning in my little display case. I
hope you enjoy it as much as I do!
Additions
References
-
Detail
and Scale Vol. 50 P-51 Mustang Part 1, By Bert Kinzey.
-
Detail
and Scale Vol. 51 P-51 Mustang Part 2, By Bert Kinzey.
-
North
American P-51 Mustang,
Osprey Modeling, By Rodrigo Cabos and Geoff Coghlin.
-
P-51
Mustang Action!, from the publishers of Flight Journal.
Kevin
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