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John vd Biggelaar
39 articles

Serving under another flag GB: Bell P-39N Airacobra French service, Eduard 8064 1/48

January 23, 2022 · in Aviation · · 36 · 1.4K

First finish of 2022 which started in 2021.

After the start of this great group build, Serving under another flag, by Michael Paquette, @smrjpaqu899, I went through my stash and quickly ended up with this P39 .

Provided options by Eduard are a US, Russian and French scheme. Since this aircraft is build often as the famous Russian variant, I decided to go for a lesser famous scheme, the French. The aircraft is the 42-9410 "M" of G.C. III/6 "Travail" in Algeria 1944. The kit is a pleasure to build, very decent fitting and quite some details out of the box. The only addition I did was drilling the exhausts, adding the seatbelts made from masking tape, brake lines on the main landing gear and adding the antenna wire.

Advices from Tom Cleaver @tcinla to thin the wing trailing edges, Tom Bebout @tom-bebout about the failing stickiness of the masks at curve surfaces and Eric Berg @eb801 about the required tweaking of the car doors, were very helpfull.

Their advices have definitely helped in getting a decent result of this kit.

To prevent it from being a tail sitter, Eduard provided a nice piece of metal which fit exactly in the nose region.

Walkways are airbrushed, with the help of the provided masks from Eduard, and do look much better than decal variants to my opinion. Something I will definitely do on future builds as well.

Unforunately I was not able to shoot better pictures using daylight because the clouded weather remains resulting in very dark days the last weeks. So I was forced to shoot some pictures with artifical light causing the colors to not look as nice as they are in real.

In the end this kit was a real pleasure to build and can be turned into a very nice looking aircraft.

Thanks to all who helped en commented during the build.

Reader reactions:
11  Awesome

28 additional images. Click to enlarge.


36 responses

  1. A truly spectacular result, John! Excellently built, painted and weathered!
    Your build thread was an equal joy to follow, nice and informative.
    Well done, my good friend!

  2. Looks great, John. Nice job!

  3. Fantastic build! Great painting!

  4. Well done John, she's one sharp looking Cobra. One of the few planes the USAAC didn't like but allied forces seem to have used it to great affect.

    • @tom-bebout, thanks Tom. This aircraft has indeed been used a lot by others and a lot of pilots were able to achieve quite some victories with them. Thanks for warning me about the decals, Eduard could improve on that part for this kit.

  5. Nice result, John! Looks great in French colors.

  6. Very Nice work John of a special plane . Your detailing is inspiring and noted by the in progress photos.
    Under-appreciated by American pilots. From what I understand the promising original power plant was not used in production. It did well with other Nations.
    Curious as to why exactly.

  7. Congratulations my friend.Keep´em comin´...

  8. Very nice job on the Cobra. Well done sir.

  9. That’s one solid built Airacobra @ johnb
    The model captures the form and stance of the real thing quite well imo, and the French livery looks cool

  10. Good looking Cobra John! @johnb You've done a fine job of making a monotone scheme look good.

  11. @johnb: You nailed it! The finished photos look terrific.

  12. Always cool to see familiar subjects in unfamiliar markings. Beautiful work, John!

  13. I think the photographs turned out terrific. The build came together excellent and weathering is exceptionally done. Great job!

  14. I can’t believe it looks better in natural daylight, it looks great in your existing photographs.

  15. Great results on your P-39. I always have liked this plane even if its performance wasn't up to the expectations or needs of the pilots. Still it soldiered on through the war and made its mark. Your build looks nice, and nice to see a French version of this aircraft.

  16. John, beautiful work on your P-39. It came out looking great!

  17. Great looking Aircobra!

  18. The extra work definitely worth it, congratulations!

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