Monday 15 October 2012

Airfix North American P-51 Mustang Mk.IV Gift set - GA-S 112 Sqd - second finish of the month!







 Just finished this one which is good as I've managed to snap the nozzle in my airbrush when trying to extract it for cleaning - won't do that again in a hurry! As before, the weak point of this brilliant little kit is the sliding canopy hood as a two part assembly comprising of a `solid’ plastic framework and a clear glazing bubble. Same applies to the windscreen - because of this extreme care must be taken when removing the clear parts from the sprue as any mistakes cannot be hidden later and the joint between the parts is very toy like. 


   


 After two coats of Dark Green disruptive camouflage the model had a couple of coats Klear applied ready to receive the decals. Unfortunately the decals provided by Airfix for GA-S have a few errors. The roundels for the fuselage and lower wings are good and were used, along with the sharks mouth and fin stripes. The kit decals include red and blue B Type roundels for the upper wing surfaces which should in fact be the late war C Type with the narrow white ring - these were sourced from the Italeri P-51 kit. The code letters for GA-S appear to be white which is correct, but the serial number KH774 is missing from the sheet altogether. Also missing is the small crocodile insignia which was applied to the left fin area of Mustangs painted by 159 MU, but this could be sourced from the decal sheet of the old Airfix Mustang kit. Note the so-called 'firewall' paint job on this 112 Sqd Mustang. An oil wash brings out some of the nice panel line detail, especially on the resin louvred intake from Freightdog which can be seen nicely in the view below. Also worth mentioning that Freightdog do corrected decals for this machine as well now, which I should really think about investing in as I have no manufacturers decal on my resin Aeroproducts 'uncuffed' prop....you can click on the images to get in a little closer if you've a mind to..cheers, thanks for looking  and see you soon..







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