Clunkmeister

Superb! Bloody gorgeous! Not my favorite bird from an aesthetics point of view, but hey, it’s all business, all the time.

Hmmm. I can see the advantage from a sales perspective no doubt. But will the extra sales offset the much larger development costs?

Building an engineer’s panel out of Airscale decals right now. This scale is TINY! But the decals themselves are beautiful when examined under an electron microscope. If you understand aero engines, the panel makes a lot of sense and is laid out beautifully. All similar gauges are grouped together just as in today’s modern ergonomic cockpits, and a quick scan of the panel will show an engineer of a developing problem. Compared to a lot of the haphazard panel layouts of the day, this one is very user friendly.

Jeroen, You saw the pictures I sent you. Talking about Friday the 13th. That was a double charge of happiness. I’ll trade mine for yours anyday.... But it IS fixed, FYI.

Nice to see this up and going again

I use Mr Surfacer as a base coat and I’ve never run into that before. Strange....

How many tree hugger American car lovers are there? 17 you say? Well, that’s exactly how many of these atrocities will be sold.

It’ll be about 5 ft. Which is way, way past my comfort zone. But just like the Lanc, the wings detach for some semblance of easier transport.

Bomb Aimee’s station will be invisible. The block in the middle is the nosewheel well. It will have a black box on top of it where I just brushed on some green, and the front will have the entry hatch from the nosewheel ladder. I expect I’ll wire this up with some bundles to busy it up through the Perspex. Some Airscale instruments to place yet.

Well, I’ve been trying to keep the model stuff as LSM only. So all though I wish I could, I need to pass on the 1/48 kit. But have no fear, you’re still entered in the drawing even if you don’t have a prize to offer.

B-17s and Privateers/Liberators showed their true worth for decades after the war. These are cool old pics.

The cool thing is that as we work, the impossibly large piles of small parts becomes less and less, as parts get used. The absolute hardest part of this build is figuring out the proper placement of component parts. Some pics of black box locations are vague at best. And prototype pics don’t help because B-36s weren’t necessarily “standard” in their equipment layout

I’ve done a bit more detail stuff today. Despite the size of the completed model, I’m not accustomed to working in such a tiny scale and seeing and detailing my work is definitely a challenge. But on the other hand, you don’t need to be quite as anal about the same tiny details you need to handle in 1/32. I’m thinking I’m going way too far on some of this, being that some of it is lower deck and will only be seen through the nose glazing. But, it’s looking real decent even though much of it is just random picking out of switches with whatever looks right to busy it all up. Tomorrow we put some clear orange over the various silver CRT displays.

This should be a home run for Kittyhawk. Their F-5s worked out well, as well.

Harv, the Tamiya or the ZM are awesome kits. The Tamiya can generally be found a bit cheaper, and while still fiddly, it’s far less so than the ZM. Knowing you, you’ll really like the Tamiya it’s a click together kit with amazing detail and builds flawlessly. Both kits build up into superb replicas if the P-51, and both have their adherents and detractors. If you want an earlier D, the new Revell kit is bloody fabulous, but it’s the early D-5 without the fin fillet. Personally, I prefer the ZM Mk.lV, as I like the wartime British variants, and you can build all variants from that one kit.

Folks, this is shaping up to being one seriously amazing Christmas Drawing! Absolutely amazing gifts are being pledged, and the participants are awesome! THIS is my favorite part of being on LSM! Seeing this come together and the generosity of members is way, way cool.

Ron, I’d be interested in at least four 1/24 copies. I have some 1930s Canadian bushplanes I want to scratchbuild. Im 1/32, we have KittyHawk’s engine from their Kingfisher kit. It’s a pretty decent model of that engine.

LOL. YEP, my resin casting skills truly suck with something as delicate and precise as a single prop blade

I’m getting frustrated... I’m missing one of the four blades for my September Fury kit, and so far, my attempts at replication have proven futile. So, anyone here close to me decent at mold and resin work who wants to give it a go? Of course, vast rewards await for the successful cloner. I can send you one of the three remaining blades as a pattern....

I’m partial to the ZM Mk.lV as well, having discovered the possibilities of that kit a couple years back. It’s my “go to” Mustang kit now. And yes, I expect John will reload.. if he ever gets this way, I have a stack of Tamiya stuff I expect I’ll never, ever build. I’m more a resin guy these days... as evidenced by my pitiful model production. I’m forever sanding on something.

Rog, you're a bad boy. Don't even open that can. That's like asking 10 historians to mix the correct shade of RLM02. You'll get 10 different shades... and each will be right. But as others have said: "on models, it's a compromise". NAA puttied the major parts of the wings at the factory, then painted them silver. We all know that. Then, field service teams sometimes maintained that or not. Who really knows who did or didn't? I have no clue. A man much wiser than myself once said that what does it matter? In 1/32, if we were "in scale", panel lines wouild be pretty much invisible at a normal viewing distance no matter what. So I actually really like the approach made by the designer of the Revell P-51D-5. The wing appears somewhat puttied, but the access, fuel, gun, and inspection panels are nicely visible for those who wish them there. So we build them as we want. If we want a newish bird that hasn't been torn up and rebuilt yet, we have smoother wings. If we're looking to depict a turd ready for the back shop and a total rebuild, we accentuate the lines a tiny amount to reflect wear. I'd say that applies to most all aircraft with flush panel edges, not just Mustangs. If you're a P-51D fan, Tamiya, ZM, and Revell of Germany have you covered pretty well.... I'm expecting ZM's P-51B to be absolutely mind blowing. Some very good minds are making this one come together nicely.

And a B-17 or PB4J-2 firebomber...

The restored B-36 is now at the Pima Museum in Az.

without having to be an