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Hongseob CHOI
22 articles

P-38,Lightning

September 17, 2017 · in Aviation · · 30 · 5.5K

Hello again!
I've stucked with heavy work for severel month and cannot build new thing in this days. I think I almost have withdrawal symptoms with this.
Anyway I'll continue presenting my old catalogues of couple of years.
I build every aircraft of all era. I'm not so interest of sky-war history but I'm fascinated of flying things. everything successfully formed and shaped to split air has an irresistible beauty.
And this from Lockheed is one of art of opera in that kind of view.

the Kit is 's 72th one. more than 70% of my build is Academy's because it's from my country and obviously it's much cheaper here in Korea. I can tell Academy's WWII wings in 72th offers much better than its price. its just perfect choice for beginner who want practicing without burden just like me.

I've done this just for 3 days. the silver is Duplicolor's Chrome lacquer spray. it's easily give a brilliant effect of silver. and I used tamiya's acrylic for weathering. acrylic paint is usually not used for weathering because it is hard to remove after dried. but on metallic surface is not adhesive well.
Put some weathering color on silver surface and wait until it drys(no more than 5min), then wipe out with cotton swab. In this case you have great vantage; you don't have to clear coat on your shine metallic surface. because acrylic paint or thinner doesn't effect with that.

Then silver lightning is done. that quickly.

later, I've noticed that one propeller is slant while taking photo. please just ignore that.

Reader reactions:
13ย  Awesome

20 additional images. Click to enlarge.


30 responses

  1. Nice series of photos. Difficult kit in this scale.

  2. Beautiful P-38, very nice finish.

  3. Hongseob, aahhhh ! its always nice to see a nice P-38. Well done !

  4. Nice job, my friend...more so in that scale.

  5. Extremely well done.

  6. A great looking build!

  7. Beautiful work.

    Only "glitch" (not a mistake) is the wheel wells, which is so little known I never figured it all out till I read the maintenance manuals for the whole series, which we have out at Planes of Fame. Fur future reference (copy and paste this post into you reference material):

    F-38E/F/G: gear wells and int4erior of gear doors are aluminum lacquer. Landing gear aluminum lacquer.

    P-38H-P-38J-15 (when they stopped painting it camouflage): gear wells and gear door interiors Neutral Grey, gear aluminum lacquer.

    P-38J-20 - all P-38L: Gear wells and doors and gear all unpainted.

  8. 1/72 you say? Wow! Well done that man!

  9. Hongseob, this is a wonderful P-38 - especially in 1/72nd scale! I like your take on painting Natural Metal Finish. (NMF)
    I thought the clear paint is used to A) seal the paint & weathering on the finished model, and B) to make the decals look more like they were painted on.

    Anyway - great job! I hope you get more time for doing your models soon.

    • Thank you Jeffry! Actually I just done with my busy work and I started new kit! Big C-17 one! I'm really excited.
      I didn't use any clear paint for this build. It's the way I use for NMF in these days. because acryllic weathering is simple and gives a nice look in short time.
      But decal is still remain in different look. then I brush semi-gloss enemel paint on it for realistic look, and for protection

  10. That's a great-looking lightening! Very convincing finish for the dirty NMF look.

  11. If you didn't tell us this was a 1/72 scale plane I would have thought it was a much larger plane. The finish looks great !

  12. Glad you told us it is 1/72nd scale; you could have fooled me! Your NMF is superb. Very hard to get this good in this scale. Well done.

  13. Hongseob, isn't Duplicolor an auto paint? If so, did you use a rattlecan or decant it and use a spraygun? It really turned out well, and in 72nd!
    Academys P-38 is the most modern molding in 72nd. 2nd runner up is Hasegawas.
    Academy had a series of 48th P-38s, which are easier than Hasegawas, if you want to come over to the dark side.
    Always good to see a P-38! Just a pretty airplane!

    • Hi Bernard, I used Duplicolor's art or modelling use can spray. name is chrome effect. I think it's best among the all kind of silver spray can. problem is it has particular weak surface. even with an finger touch the shinning quality drops by far.
      Good to see another P-38 lover!

  14. Sheโ€™s a beauty. Really nice job.

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