George R Blair Jr (@gblair)
These are some excellent photos. Thanks for sharing these with us. I'm glad to help with the information about seats too. I knew I had some pictures of you were asking about, I just had to dig in order to find them.

I really do like the multi colored versions of the T-6 / SNJ. These training planes were often painted like this. The Green stripes shown on the SNJ illustration I posted earlier were to designate a navigational or instrument training plane.

I have 3 of the old 1/48 scale Monogram kits in the stash. I wanted to build one up for our Korean War group, but never even got it going. So you might have just triggered my dragging one of them out of the stash to build the NAS Deland SNJ. I think the one from NAS Deland that I wanted to build was an aluminum color overall, just like you mentioned. There's a good chance I will start the SNJ's in a mini Kindergarten like I have done with some other types. This will let me pick out which one I want to complete them as later.

As a kid I got to ride in a T-6 once... You couldn't wipe the smile off my face for a month afterwards either !

Ahhh the honey do list. I have been working on one of them too lately. Which is part of the reason why I didn't get to finish up the FM-2 any sooner than I did. It's done now, and I have been "hankering" to build a SBD (also from NAS Deland), and possibly one or two of the Hobby Boss Wildcats in the Kindergarten. Recently I found a great picture of a FM-2 from NAS Miami. I wanted to build several other Wildcats as training planes from Daytona Beach, Deland, and Sanford. Sadly, we don't see too many models built up of training planes. If I have my way about fixing this, things will change soon.

The T-6 I am thinking about building is molded in red, since it is the Air Racing version that is boxed together along with a "Miss America" Mustang... and speaking of Mustangs, I have been itching to do one of them lately too. Pedro Rocha and I will likely be doing a mutual P-51 build soon.

Just like you said, so many models, and so little time... I hear ya !

Thanks, Louis (@lgardner). Having been an instructor pilot, I am always looking for trainers to do. It always seems hard to find WW2 photos of trainers. I guess they used all the film taking pictures of fighters and bombers. I found a free 3D print file online for a P-51 seat. It is designed for RC airplanes, so I will need to scale it down quite a bit. We'll see how it comes out.

Thanks, Eric (@eb801). I have used a set of Quinta before, as well as a set from Kits World. Both work well, but require some different techniques. They seem like decals, since you soak them in water, but that is where the similarity ends. You can't use any decal fluids on them, and the manufacturers also recommend that you glue them in place with a little superglue. I used some Gator glue on both sets and it worked fine. It is pretty easy to move them into place and they are fairly flexible. I really like the 3D aspect of them, and both come with a clear lens over the instruments. This will be my 3rd set of these 3D decals, so we will see how they go, especially since they are designed for another kit.

Impressive start, George @gblair.
Especially your work on the seats is amazing, both look great.
Those Quinta decals will improve the interior a lot.

@gblair - Having quite a bit of passenger time in both P-51s and T-6s I can assure you the seats in the T-6 are not the same as the P-51. The cleanup you did of the kit seats is excellent.

Tom Cleaver (@tcinla)
George R Blair Jr (@gblair)
I agree with you about the NAS Deland SNJ being in an overall aluminum color. It also looks to me as if it was a painted finish, instead of the occasional bare metal variety. I do plan to build up this very same aircraft soon. Chances are it will also be a part of the JS group, and I'll be sure to start a build journal for it too when the time comes.

Thank you for the comments about the colors on that particular plane. I do sincerely appreciate them.

I also agree the work that George is doing on his model is indeed excellent.

Tom,
As far as the T-6 / SNJ seats being different from a P-51 that's not exactly true. There were two different style of seats used in the P-51 Mustang. One style was called the Warren McAllister style, and the other was called the Schick Johnson type. They are two completely different seats.

The Warren McAllister style is the kind that was used in both type of aircraft, the T-6 / SNJ and the Mustang. I too have flown in a "Texan" but only once. I was a teenager at the time when I was fortunate to get a ride in one. I have also sat in numerous Mustangs as work was being done to them.

Here is a link that shows the style of seat I mentioned was indeed used in both planes.

https://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?/topic/324307-warren-mcallister-p-51d-t-6-pilots-seat/

Since both planes were being manufactured by North American, it made good sense to have some parts that interchanged between various aircraft.

Occasionally the Warren McAllister type is called the Warren McArthur style. So I'm not exactly sure which terminology is correct about the name.

This is a picture of the SNJ-4 cockpit from the NASM. It's hard to see the entire seat in this picture, but you can see part of the lower seat pan that the pilot sits on. There is one small difference here, and that is how the rolled edge is formed on the seat bottom. This might be due in part to a minor design change, or possibly done in order to make it easier to mass produce them.

This is a picture that I personally took of a restored Mustang cockpit with the seat installed. The seats are the same in this particular application.

The other Mustang seat style called the "Schick Johnson" kind is more "squared" and this might be what you were referring to.

This style of "Mustang" seat was made using aluminum, and another version of it was made using plywood, to conserve aluminum during the War. It was used in various other WW2 American aircraft.

Hope this helps to clear up the air some. Take care.

I'm sure what George has done here will look really good once it's all painted and installed, especially in a 1/48 scale.

I decided to remove and replace the foot troughs in the rear cockpit, as well as those in front. My goal was to remove the troughs one at a time in an effort to retain the geometry of the floor framework. It slots into holes along the side of the fuselage, so keeping everything lined up would be nice. Scratchbuilding missing details often begins to feed on itself. You add or correct one thing, and then decide to do another, which leads to another, and soon you are scratchbuilding the whole cockpit. In an effort to keep from being pulled too far into the hole, I have been looking for 3D printing files that I can use to speed things along. I have found some really interesting things. I found a file for the burner cans on an F-15, I found files to print a complete F4U Corsair cockpit for a radio control plane, a complete F7F cockpit, and another for a P-51. Each cockpit consists of about 40 parts that need to be printed, but I wanted to see if I could print a seat that would work for this model. The cockpits are for a quarter-scale RC plane, which is quite large. I found the file for the seat, which was a chore since the file names are written in Czechoslovakian (Thank you, Google Translate). I took a couple of shots at scaling the seat to 1/48. The first one came out close to 1/72, but the second try matches the size of the seat in the T-6 almost exactly. The sides and back of the print are scale thickness, which means they are very, very thin. I plan to print some more seats tomorrow and begin exploring if I can use them in this model.

That's about it for today. We have friends coming over tomorrow, so my wife has had me on cleaning duty for most of the day. We actually had some rain yesterday. It lasted about 3 minutes. Certainly not a drought-buster, but it did drop the temperature down to 95 degrees for a while. Everyone in the neighborhood was outside staring at the water falling out of the sky. We haven't had rain for about 90 days. It would be a good thing if we could get a bunch of rain, otherwise we will have an interesting spring and summer coming next year. Cheers everyone.

6 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Those 3D printed parts look great, George. I had several rides in an SNJ way back in the ‘70s and kind of remember the seats with the open sides and diagonal bar. Hopefully the Occidental canopies fit better than the parts in the Monogram kit I built a couple of years ago. I only used the windscreen and got vac replacements for the other sections.

With regard to the replacement wing color: I’d lean toward dark sea blue over white. I can’t remember seeing an overall wartime glossy sea blue SNJ. I think the navy was receiving them and keeping them in bare metal later in the war. It was post war when they were painted overall yellow.

Louis (@lgardner): I don't know whether you want to do an early or late T-6/SNJ, but check the canopy in the kit if you want to do an early one. This kit has been released many times over the years, and some of the kits have only the late canopy, some have only the early canopy, and some have both. Mine had both canopies, but only one windscreen. Red plastic will be just as much fun to paint as my bright yellow.

On another topic: Are you and your wife in the track of this hurricane? It sounds like it is going to build into something big. The super warm Gulf waters are really making these unpredictable, so please stay safe. Cheers.