Lockheed Neptune
On a recent trip to Colorado, I visited the Weisbrod Aircraft Museum in Pueblo, Colorado. While there I noticed that their Lockheed Neptune had been repainted and looks pretty nice for an outdoors display aircraft.
It inspired me to build the Hasegawa 1/72 Neptune I had in my collection of kits. This kit was originally released in 1972. I think my example was from the early 1970s, judging from the box it was in.
The decals were long past their prime and I was forced to use whatever spare decals I had in my decal library. This Neptune is decorated with decals from a 1/48 F-4 Phantom kit, a F4U, and a sheet of generic US national “ star & bar” emblems. I didn't have all the decals I needed, but I did my best to make it resemble aircraft in photos & illustrations found online. I chose the LN tail code for “Lockheed Neptune”.
One interesting feature of this old kit was the interlocking tabs on the wings. It makes for a very strong assembly when glued in place thru the fuselage.
It's an easy to assemble kit. It provides scratch builders plenty of opportunity to develop or showcase their skills. Mine , however, is strictly OOB, with the exception of the decals.
She looks really great in this scheme, Jay @ssgt
Very nice result.
Thank you, John @johnb ! I like the orange & blue together.
Excellent result, Jay! The chosen scheme is striking and you replicated it perfectly!
Thank you , Spiros @fiveten ! I thought it was the most attractive paint scheme for this type.
Neptune's Trident! Your great work is highly visible on this build, Jay.
Very nice build.
Thanks for your kind words, George @georgeswork ! I like high visibility paint schemes.
Very nice, Jay. Books, movies, museums, etc...great to have an inspiration for a build. Gives it some "juice".
I like it!
Thank you Gary @gwskat ! You are right about inspirations … that museum also had a B-29 that inspired me to buy a kit and start planning. It’s a nice museum for such an out of the way place.
This is a very eye-catching model, of one of my favourite Cold War planes.
I have also built this kit, but could not make the interlocking wing junctions work. No matter what I did, they ended up misaligned. I had to clip them and do the alignment by eye...see photos here: https://www.marcellorosa.com/1-72p2v-7neptune
Also have to agree that the Hasegawa decals don't survive well after a few decades in storage.
Your Neptune is excellent , @marcellorosa1 . Far superior to mine. Also your Matchbox Privateer turned out very well !
Nicely done Jay. Once in awhile one just needs to build a kit that's not full of fiddly little parts but has a great overall shape and decent design. I think I hear a Monogram P-47 calling me from the stash right now.
I agree , Tom @tom-bebout !
In fact the Monogram P-47 kits are two of my very favorites… I have three built , but none in the stash. I do have a few other old Monogram kits though.
Very neat work on this old Hasegawa kit, Jay, you’ve definitely brought it up to date with this paint scheme.
Thank you George, @chinesegeorge !
I like the orange & blue combination, I just wish I had some better decals for it, I was too cheap to buy more so I just used what I had.
Very atractive painting!
Thank you, @lis ! It took a lot of masking tape and time to paint this one.
Jay when you started this project I told you she'll be a winner. You took a rough diamond and you made it sparkle and shine in all the right places. I love the colour combinations of standard Navy colors and dayglo. Well done my friend. Your next project will be even more stunning!
Thank you, Morné @mornem ! I appreciate your advice and encouragement on this project. It’s a nice old kit, I wish I had a better selection of decals to choose from for it.
Nice job, Jay (@ssgt). This looks like a really fun paint scheme to mask and paint, but it came out perfect. I really like these types of paint schemes, the brighter, the better. Well done.
Hi George, @gblair, thank you…. Yes it took awhile to mask this. I like the bright hi-viz paint schemes from the 50s & 60s…
What paint/color did you use for the hi-viz sections, Jay (@ssgt).
I used this Testors paint. I painted the area white before I applied the orange paint, @gblair.
2 attached images. Click to enlarge.
Wonderful build!
Thank you, Rob @robertandy , it adds some color to my collection of aircraft models.
Nicely done and colourful. Decal bashing where you get see what you have in the stash, but will they disintegrate in the water? I've used the same orange paint source myself. A couple of Neptunes,1 A derelict at Floyd Bennet Field in NY 1980, it's since has been restored. Second photo from NAS Roosevelt Roads P.R. 1977, I think it's from VC-8.@ssgt
2 attached images. Click to enlarge.
Hi Robert @roofrat ,the last few builds I’ve had quite a bit of decal malfunctions. Nothing lasts forever, at least decals don’t seem to. I’ve had mixed results using the liquid decal film. It seems like a last ditch desperate act to use it.
Those are good pictures of Neptunes. The only Neptune I’ve ever been close to is this particular museum bird, I grew up in that area and have seen several times over the last 40 years or so. It used to be gray & white like the one in your first photograph.
That's a lovely Neptune, Jay! I have this kit, and intend to do a Vietnam gunship (have the conversion set for it).
Thank you, Greg @gkittinger !
This kits is from the Claude Goode collection. I think he would be pleased to know it was finally out of the box. The conversion to the gunship version will look nice, I hope to see it soon on imodeler
Nice job Jay @ssgt, this is a great looking P2V. Your decals mix is spot on for this scheme. She's a beauty!
This brings back a lot of my H.S. Naval Junior ROTC memories. As I have mentioned to you earlier, we had a retired Commander who was in charge of our ROTC program and boy we heard a lot about his days flying the P2V Neptune. Great stuff!
Thanks Bob @v1pro … I was fortunate to have enough decals to make it look mostly finished.
Many of these were lost during the Cold War .. shot down by Communist China and Russia….