Louis,

What I've appreciated about your 3 year journey into Mustang modeling is your taking the time to photograph and write about your experiences. Both educational and entertaining. (While life gets in the way of modeling too. Some folks would move on.) You've applied some critical thinking and allowed others to give free advice, consult, collaborate and share your passion for the Mustang. That's something I'm thankful for. Lou being Lou.

The model is turning out to be a show stopper. I always hold my breath at the decal stage. What stands out in my mind about this build is the success of using foil and paint to good effect. Doing a deep dive . . . those D-Day invasion stripes will always make the expert-in raise their eye brows but, there accurate. Great build, project and testimony to hanging in there.

Superb!

Spiros Pendedekas (@fiveten)
John vd Biggelaar (@johnb)
Today I took Cripes-A-Mighty III outside and took the pictures for the upcoming article. You should see how the foil finish looks in the bright sunlight ! I do think you will be pleased to see it in the headlines section. Thank you both for the kind compliments and for following along and also regularly commenting on this journal as you have been.

Stephen W Towle (@stephen-w-towle)
Thank you for your valuable insights. I think your assistance with this project has been invaluable with trying to decipher what we are actually seeing here, (especially with the "LOU IV" pictures). There have been times where I was "In the Zone" and I didn't take time to grab a few pictures because things were going so smooth. At other times I likely took too many and bored some with the tiniest details. Overall I tried to make this a learning experience for all of us, myself included. It was actually a lot of fun to go digging into the original pictures, and discovering the little things like the D Day stripes not being evenly spaced (or even straight for that matter). Having the Eagle Editions book to go along with the "Cripes-A-Mighty" decal set was extremely valuable. I must give a lot of the credit to them as well for gathering all the information they did and placing it in one place.

Yes it is crazy how the time has gone by. Three years sometimes seems like it was yesterday. Then there were some times that dragged on forever. Thankfully they are behind us now, and we are moving on.

We have had a lot of things happen to us over these past few years, that have caused these Mustang builds (and others) to be placed on a temporary hold. Life gets in the way of our hobby once in a while. Some of it was not good, like my wife's peritoneal cancer diagnosis with a 5 year survival projection at 39 %, my stepson's death, my mom suffering from advanced dementia, my back / neck pain problems and my several related spinal fusion surgeries, my melanoma fights (the joys of growing up in Florida and serving four years bouncing around inside Army tanks in the desert courtesy of Uncle Sam).

But we have had some good things happen too. I'm thankful that we are still alive. I'm thankful we have a roof over our heads and enough food to eat. I'm thankful my wife successfully made it through several surgeries of her own, 8 rounds of chemotherapy (as well as losing all of her hair), and her still being with us today. My back pain is definitely better than it was. It's not perfect by any means, but I'm a lot better off now than I was this time a year ago. My mom is finally getting the professional help she so desperately needed, help that we couldn't provide on our own, especially with our own physical troubles and ailments.

What I have learned from all of this, is that each day is a gift, and to never take anything for granted. It can all be gone in the blink of an eye. Love the ones you have that are close to you, and make each day count. Never forget your friends or where you came from. Live the good life as best you can, and always do the right thing no matter what, for someday you will meet your Maker. Some of us will meet him sooner than others.

With everything we have had going on, I still tried to make this journey with the Mustang builds informational, and have fun at the same time. This could not have been possible without the help from my friends. People like you. This is another thing I am grateful for. We have a wonderful community here on Imodeler, and I have made some good friends.

You should have seen the Mustang sitting outside today in the sunlight. It really "pops" with the foil finish. Today I took the pictures for the upcoming Christmas Day article while the sun was shining brightly, as we are expecting some colder weather and clouds in our weather forecast. So it was today or never as far as taking the outside pictures.

I think you will enjoy them. Today I also did some work on "LOU IV", and I will post it up next. Thanks again my friend for everything, and I hope to hear from you again soon.

George R Blair Jr (@gblair)
Thanks for the kind words and compliments my friend ! Today I finished with the various oil leaks and exhaust stains. I took the pictures for the Christmas Day article, and plan on posting the completed Mustang on the 25th. Your comments are the ultimate compliment, for this is exactly what I was striving for. I wanted a 1/32 scale miniature of the real thing, and this is as close as I can get. I'm sure there are others who could have done it a lot better than I, but I can say I gave it my best. There were some times where I was wondering why I was going through the extra time trouble and effort to re-do something if I wasn't happy with how it turned out. Now I'm glad I did. Having a compliment like this coming from a former US Air Force pilot is the ultimate in my book. Thanks again my friend.

Erik Gjørup (@airbum)
Thanks Erik !

Tom Cleaver (@tcinla)
Yes sir, it is hard to think it's been three years. Man it has flown by too. But there were some times that time seemed to drag on forever too. Fortunately this didn't feel this way when I was busy working at the bench. Thanks for the compliments Tom.

One down, one to go ! I made some progress on "LOU IV" today, so please stay tuned for another installment.

What more to add, other that this is a supreme job, my friend @lgardner!

Louis,

" Each day is a gift," and being on the right side of the Grass is what its all about.
Reading up an Dana Bells article of Blue painted Mustangs. There is a color photo of a Mustang with blue painted wing tips and the tail has blue tips too. The values and the intensities look similar to your theory of painting the blue MG covers on LOUIV. If you have a program that break down the colors and intensities of the two photos . . . you may have a match.

1 attached image. Click to enlarge.

Here is the recent progress made on "LOU IV"... I'm saying recent because it took me several days to get done what you se here. Not that I spent three days working on the model, but once again life got in the way of my precious bench time.

Remember when I sanded away the Silver color paint on the wings of "Cripes-A-Mighty III" ?

This one went through the same process, but thankfully it only had to be done to the undersides of the wings.

I used a 400 grit wet or dry sand paper this time, and I carefully sanded away all of the paint that was previously sprayed on. It also had an "Orange Peel" look to it and would never be smooth enough to make it look how I wanted it too.

So the best solution for me was to take it down to clean bare plastic again. I didn't want to lose the rest of the work I had done, so I opted to sand it off rather than use "Easy Off" oven cleaner on it.

The next step was to sand it again, with frequent cleaning of the sand paper and fresh water used for rinsing the surfaces. This is key to getting all of the scratches out.


Finally I used the fingernail sanding boards, and did some more sanding on the plastic. After a final polish, the plastic shines better than it did when the kit was new. These two Mustangs both had a slightly rough texture to them. This could have been part of the problem that didn't allow me to get the shine I wanted.

This polishing process took care of that.

I used some liquid masking to cover the signaling light lenses.

The Wings were carefully masked off, and the panel lines were scribed back on. I used a "Rosie the Riveter" tool to add the rivets again.

Once again it was painted, but I used Model Master "Metallizer" Aluminum Plate color this time.

Since I had the air brush loaded, I went ahead and painted the areas near the radiator "Dog House".

The reason why this was done is the original "LOU IV" doesn't appear to have had D Day Invasion Stripes located under the rear fuselage. I took an original picture showing the underside of the original "LOU IV", and I purposefully over exposed it to see what could be observed. It doesn't look as if they D Day stripes were there. So I painted this area using the same Aluminum Plate color. It will look OK when I add the oil streaks.

I also noticed the outer edges of the horizontal stabilizer were also a lot shinier than the surrounding aluminum parts.

This is a picture showing the bottom sides of "TIKA IV" . It was from a "sister" Squadron, but you can clearly see it doesn't have the stripes either. Beyond a doubt this is known as can be seen in this picture. This also happens to be the same Mustang that Stephen Towle mentioned in his last response. You can see the outer wing tips and tips of the stabilizers have been painted in a darker color.

If you have ever been around a full sized Mustang you will know why they were not painted. This area is very close to the ground, so not much room is left for painting purposes.

I will have to come back and again paint the MG covers using Molotow, since they have not set up long enough, or the tape I used was too aggressive and affected the shine.

I hope to start covering this one in foil tomorrow.

As always, comments are encouraged. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas, or whatever Holiday your family observes.

This is your usual superlative research and implementation to the model, my friend @lgardner! Really like how it comes out!

You have the patience of a saint, Louis (@lgardner). I can't imagine how much effort and time it took to get these results on the wing and belly of your plane. You should be charging by the hour. The results are certainly spectacular.

Your last few years have been a real trial and probably would have crushed a lot of others. I had a friend who used to say "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger". After a particularly long string of setbacks in high school, my dad told me that these things build character, and I told him I thought I had enough character already. I am sure you feel the same way.

I have all of those Air Force Color books in my library somewhere, as well as the ones about the Navy colors. I haven't looked at them in a long time, so I guess I need to go back and remind myself what info is in them. Looking forward to the conclusion of your dual build.