First airplane since 2016?
Yep turns out tis true. Last aircraft post here was the Airfix Defiant in October 2016. Wow.
Anyway, here she is, Trumpeter's fairly new 1/32 P-40F. I waited a while for a P-40F and greeted the Trumpeter with mixed reviews. Surface detail is really delicate and detailed, and turned out perfect for retaining my washes. Fits were nice, landing gear good, most details accurate. I even like the rubber tires, most folks don't. How-evah they got the nose contours wrong, as usual, requiring shaving down the top of the cowling area to make it look better, but not perfect. The canopy and windscreen are too rounded on top as per their Hellcats, and they missed the wingtip upsweep like everybody else 'cept Hasegawa. (only us P-40 nuts notice that one). The interior is better, but still doesn't use the top of the wing as the cockpit floor. BUT it is a P-40F at last, looks 90% like one.
Another bugger-up is this is a short-tail (early) P-40F and of the decal options they give you, 3 are for long-tail later blocks and one is incomplete. Trumpeter desperately needs me for research and development, I'm calling them. I have to go to China? Whoops, forget it. Ah the decals look too thick anyway. Just so happens as I was doing P-40F research I found a pic I really liked featuring a section of F's on a training mission out of Texas. One is peeling off to dive and shows off the well weathered top end, and just was something I wanted to try and duplicate. It entailed making stencils for nose numbers, and finding the serial numbers for the tail. I decided to tackle it.
I also wanted to try a new painting technique I saw on the innertube, done best by a guy calls himself "Scale-a-ton". He uses light color "squiggles" of fine lines under the main paint color, that gives excellent tonal variation without the "patchwork" look a lot of folks do not care for. This was also my first time using Vallejo Air paints, turned out to be just fine. Only issue to watch is I did have some peeling when removing the masking tape, very slight but make sure your plastic is prepped well. Tail numbers were sourced from a Hasegawa P-40N, the decal sheet had a whole run of numbers on it. A tad too large but useable. National insignia are Hasegawa also. I made a stencil for the "2's" and sprayed them. Here we hit a bump as I discovered "close-up" on the computer, to find my plane in question had nose decoration and a name-"MUTT" in small letters. The diamond shape probably was a carry-over from being a 57th fighter group machine at sometime, and MUTT? Well it was probably a pieced together hanger queen. Rebuilt, repainted, ridden hard and put away wet. Serial # research (Notice in the pic, the plane behind it is it's consecutively serialed sister) showed the po' thang was SOC-Stricken Off Charge-in summer 1943, undoubtedly one of hundreds pranged by the newbies with wings. More masking and a fine tipped brush later, we were good.
So I actually finished her. I will be using the Scale-a ton finish from now on on all my weathered birds. I've also heard it called "marbling". I will put a link in for a video. Sorry for the poor dark pics, I just cannot get this camera to do what I want. I think the effect shows up in some of them. Have to get a smart phone like everybody else.
What's next? only have about 150 left to choose from after the recent purge. Like I saw on the net, Quarantine? Self isolation? We modelers have been preparing for this our whole lives.
Scale-a-ton P-40N https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fgTYKhASq4&t=772s
Great work as usual Bill.
For those who'd rather do a P-40F that will actually be right at the end (I really dislike kits where no matter what all you do, the basic material is so flawed it can't be corrected), there is an alternative: get the Greymatter Figures resin conversion, designed by Derek Bradshaw (which means it's right), then get a Hasegawa 1/32 P-40 (best one to get is the "Kittyhawk III" kit - long OOP and now a bit pricey, or a P-40E and do a "short tail"). Kits World Decals has a great series of artwork done by the 79th FG group artist "Corporal Pumphrey" that's really good.
Thanks for the inspiration to drag out my conversion kit.
Wow! No rust, no humongous rivets, and no mud! Great to have you back in an A/C state of mind. Superb weathering. Please keep doing more wing-ey things.
That's a fantastic job, Bill. Excellent cockpit! I loved your presentation as well, oozing from attention to detail, we (myself erroneously in the group) modelers love. I confess: I DO have the Trumpy 1/32 P-40B and cannot avoid but building it, despite its flaws.
All the best, my friend and stay safe!
Nice! The marbling technique looks good. I've tried it preshaded, but never post (or after decals!)
Love this post and the p40, my favorite as well. That photo of the p40 peeling off - time to look through the stash...
Nicely done Bill, and no posts since 2016? Nice to see you again and none the less with a post of one of my favorite A/C the P-40. Just finished up my P-40F from the old AMT kit. Yours looks really good my friend.
1 attached image. Click to enlarge.
Ooh at's a beauty, nice base too. No AIRPLANE posts since '16, been doing ground pounders.
Great build. Really like that subtlety weathered finish.
A fantastic build, welcome back! Love your last paragraph.
Great Warhawk Bill!
She sher looks pertty there, Bill...
Excellent build, love the painting and the whole article. Easy to see your love of the P-40!
“There’s yer six feet of China Joe, now go fill it up!” (Ratatatatatat!)
Looks like a winner!
Thank you senor. I don't know if you've seen that guy's techniques but take a look, right up your alley.
Thanks for the likes guys, appreciate it.