MustangManiac

Hi Tony, Looking awesome! Do you intend to leave your flaps in the up position for this build? Every shot I've seen of her with Skyraider tanks has had the flaps raised, even with a shut down engine, like there almost wasn't clearance for them to be lowered. I'm also curious are you going to just make this one stiff legged, even though Tamiya gives the parts to make her in an in flight stance with the stand, so you can make the leading edge of the wing good and smooth? If you're interested in doing another racer later there's a new decal company that was recently taking suggestions on what P-51s would be good racers to do decals for that wouldn't need a conversion set to modify the kit first. The decal company is called TG decals and there were some good suggestions thrown out them like Miss Suzy Q, and all the Bardahl P-51s and Hi Time II in zebra stripes. I don't know yet if these all will come to fruit or not though either. Cheers, Brady

Hi Tony, The build is looking good! Yes I have had the difficulty with the hard points too. I am curious did you get a set of Harold's Aero 150C drop tanks for your build from large scale planes? I'm not sure if he's a member here or not. If you did, where are you determining being the right point of mounting the tanks between his mounting points for the larger skyraider pylons that are longer than the P-51's pylons? I see you're also going to use the exhaust stacks with the fairings whereas as of now mine don't have them. To do this particular racer correctly it seems we need to pick one picture of it or one group taken at the same time and go with it. I've seen four different racing paint schemes for this bird in just the way the name is painted or what it is alone. Two or three layouts of skyraider tanks with and without fins and numbers. Then with or without hard points at all and both layouts of exhaust stacks. It makes it hard to build correctly I must say. Cheers, Brady

Hi Tony, Sorry, I just realized I really didn't answer your questions at all in my post. Yes, I'm building this in 1/32 scale with the Tamiya P-51D kit. I had tinkered with the idea of using a 1/32 Tamiya A6M's pitot tube for the wing and it's made of metal. I haven't held this up to the wing out of one of my other kits yet to see if it seems to be long enough. To me the pitot tube on the real racer appears to be totally straight that's why I considered the Zero's pitot tube. I don't have any F-104s to compare this to so I'm no help there...sorry. Cheers, Brady

Hello everyone. Thanks for the warm welcome. I'm glad I wasn't taken as trying to take over your posting by showing what I'd previously found. If you guys want to see my build here it is: I bought this build as a previously started build someone else gave up on and I just thought it was cool looking to have skyraider tanks on a P-51 at the time. There were some problems I had to overcome that I didn't create in the beginning of this build like a broken engine bearer and a few missing or broken parts, some did and some didn't need replacing. I was very grateful Tamiya will give us replacement parts for this build. Sometimes with this kit it was aggravating how many parts I needed just to fix something small they broke, such as the tailwheel assembly. What I started with: The fuselage halves before closing up: The cockpit after I painted it: I filled the shell ejection chutes with plastic card and sanded them flush: I sanded off the guns and filled them with putty and CA glue and sanded again. I also filled the rivets and panel lines with Mr. Surfacer 1500 except around the gun bays because these were used on the real bird for some sort of holding tanks for the spray bars in front of the radiator for better cooling. I worked with a member over on Large Scale Planes to make these tanks to the best we could. Where I am right now. As of now I have a Trumpeter Bearcat prop with the Grey Matters Spinner and some plastic rod and tubing modification to keep it centered and tight. I intentionally glued the arms on the pylons like this because it appears to be that way to me In this picture of the real racer: The part here that sucks is no one makes the P-51 pylons without the aerodynamic fairings like Bardahl didn't have present in any pictures I've seen, so I just cut my losses and used the usual pylons. I don't want to steal your thunder here Tony so I'm going to cut my long windedness off there. Cheers, Brady

Hi Tony, Here's the Sargent Fletcher 75 gallon tank and its dimensions if you're interested. I'm pretty sure these are not what was on Bardahl Special though. The only P-51 I've seen both styles (75 gallon and 110 gallon) of tanks on is Berlin Express. These are a few shots I compared as confirmation they were not the same size tanks: 75 gallon tanks: There is a couple better close up pictures of this set on pinterest while they were off the airplane. In one picture you can read it says 75 gallon capacity. 110 gallon tanks: The way you can tell these are not the same right off hand is the caps for the tanks are not located on the top of the tank. I've also noticed these tanks on P-51 always have the filler cap on the side to the pilot's left, they aren't made to be filled from the outside on both sides, but I haven't seen these set up differently yet. There's also some slight difference in overall length. The 110 gallon not the 165 gallon tank on the wingtip of an RF/F-80: I'm still torn on which tanks I want to use on my model because I've noticed there's two different versions of the paint scheme for two versions of the tanks whether it be these tanks or the skyraider tanks. I also noticed in some pictures of Bardahl Special the Skyraider tanks do have the tail fins and in other they pictures don't. This is Bardahl Special's cockpit after she became "Section Eight". Cheers, Brady

Hi Tony, I just found your build by accident the other day. I had to wait approval to join up here to talk to you. Beautiful build so far, I'm actually building the same racer as you are currently and maybe we can help each other on details. I do want to bring to your attention that the bird we are building now flies as "Section Eight" the Black and White checkered Bardahl P-51 still carries that paint scheme. Gosshawk still has the shots of the checkered P-51 under restoration on their website as a previous project. This P-51 just doesn't see the light of day much any more but it was restored and kept its racing paint scheme. So some of these pictures you're using are not of Bardahl Special the solid white paint scheme, just so you know. In all my research I've only been able to find one shot of the instrument panel and it is from after Bardahl Special became Section Eight so I'm not certain if it was the same as a racer or not. But I've seen three different versions of the name Bardahl Special in the way it was painted colors and font then it also was Challenger, I don't recall if that was before or after it was Bardahl Special though. To answer your question on the checkered drop tanks through what I've found is they may have been tip tanks for an RF/F-80 more commonly seen on the RF-80 it seems. If I had to guess theyre Sargent Fletcher tanks. When I figure out how to post pictures I'll send you one of a drawing of the Sargent Fletcher 75 gallon tank and you'll see why I think that's what they are, only these would be 110 gallon tanks. Cheers, Brady