1/72 Academy P-38J Lightning 

by Anthony Lorton

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Hello from the UK.  This is my first submission to ARC, so I'd like to say thanks to Steve and all the other contributors for making this site what it is.  I've been lurking for some time, and this is the first model I've built that I'm brave enough to put up for public display!  I didn't build it with accuracy in mind, so please look at it as a fun project and nothing else.

The model was built out-of-the-box, with no additions except for a nose weight.  It's a lovely kit to put together, it needed very little filler, but due to its shape and size, it was a pain to sand. I lost some of the panel lines, so this was also my first attempt a rescribing them. It went OK I think, but as you can see in the pictures, I should have rescribed more of them to complete the effect.

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I'm fairly happy with the outcome; I don't usually build in 1:72, so it was more fiddly than I'm used to. The pre and post-shading worked well, and I'm pleased with the weathering effects I tried out on this one (I like heavy weathering).  I did however have to abandon certain painting aspects, like the yellow noses and spinners, the white band between the chrome and olive drab on the nose and (my biggest regret) the invasion stripes.  I decided to ditch those, as I painted it in the wrong order and the masking was just going nowhere, resulting in me itching to throw it against the wall.

It's painted with Tamiya acrylics (the wrong ones!), except for the nose which is alclad aluminium and the superchargers are mostly alclad jet exhaust. The decals were horrible!  Some are out of register (the fuel cap ones are particularly bad) and they battled with the decal setting solutions I tried and needed some major persuasion to settle into panel lines.  It's weathered using the Promodeller dark wash (top and bottom), the chips were done with a silver pencil, and the exhaust stains with thinned Tamiya acrylics (my first with an airbrush).  The staining on the underside was done with oil paint and turpentine.

Anthony

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Photos and text © by Anthony Lorton