This is so inspiring to follow and watch! It’s my absolute favourite kit to build, both the 72nd and 1/48 version by Airfix. Yours looks great!

Looks great, George. I’m an Airfix fan too. They make well engineered kits of subjects that I want to build at a decent price.

Things slowed down while my wife and I drove up to see how our new house is doing. We bought it last November, and we were told to anticipate a completion by October, at the latest. I never thought it would take this long, and now it looks like it will take even longer. We are having the same problems the rest of the country is having: shortage of the stuff needed to build the house and a shortage of the people needed to actually build it. At first, they couldn't get lumber, then it was insulation board for the exterior walls, and then it is bricks. We now have five pallets of bricks sitting in the yard, but the builders lost their masonry crew and can't find replacements. It is fun to go upstairs and cruise around the room that will become my hobby room. It is a "bonus" room that we added in what was originally the attic.

Back to the P-40, I got the glass squared away prior to painting. Once again, I am impressed with the quality of the parts (in this case the glass), and the options that are available. I finally got the Peewit masks I had ordered, and it included masks for inside and outside the canopies, as well as a mask for the large gunsight/armored glass. The masks went on easily and neatly.


This kit has lots of cool glass choices. There are two front windscreens: one for a P-40B and one for the P-40s used by the Flying Tigers. There are also two different options for the sliding portion of the canopy: one for a closed canopy and a slightly wider one for an open canopy. There are two unused glass pieces: a clear rear hatch and an aerial camera, both of which would be used for a photo recon version of this plane. Hmmm...



There is a large glass piece that is installed directly in front of the pilot, and attached just above the instrument panel. At first I thought it was armored glass, but a little investigation informed me that it was a combination armored glass and an early reflector gunsight. The glass was slightly angled to cut down on sunlight reflections, but the kit has you install it square with the interior. Don't tell anyone that I didn't go to the trouble to angle it in my model. A photo I got from Louis (@lgardner) was helpful here. :o)



I prepped anything that would be inaccessible after the glass went on. Another photo I got from Louis (@lgardner) was very helpful here. I painted the interior of the forward glass before I installed it.




I wanted to try some new canopy glue that was recommended to me. It is called Ultra Glue, and is manufactured by Mig. The first surprise when you open it up is that it is very thick, about the consistency of pudding. It is very sticky, and dries clear. I glued the forward windscreen and the rear cockpit panels using the glue, and they seem to be pretty solid. I started by tacking each piece down with just a tiny bit of glue, then I smeared on a bunch of glue from the outside to complete the gluing task and filling any voids. This glue cleans up with water, so I wasn't bashful about how much glue I used on the outside. I wiped up the excess with a paper towel, and then cleaned up anything left with a damp paper towel.



I should have some time later to do some more painting. I am doing some thinking and planning about how I best to get the effects I am looking for.

Everyone stay safe. Cheers.

Thanks, John (@johnb). The glue seems pretty nice, so far. I will let you know if any of the glass parts fly off the plane later. Cheers.

George, @gblair
I am sorry to hear that you are having troubles with getting your new home completed. Things like this seem to be occurring on a regular basis throughout our Nation, and it will hopefully end some day... Our home air conditioning unit went out early in June. Luckily for us, we were planning on replacing the unit anyway, but had not yet set an actual replacement date. So the funds were there, but the A/C unit, required new parts to upgrade the system and additional materials needed were not. Little did we know...

It couldn't have happened at a worse time. It was hot, and it gets very hot down here in Florida, similar to what you experience in Texas or the Southwest. Anyhow, due to the virus, obtaining a replacement unit that was comparable to what we had planned for was tricky. The installer was having a very hard time getting what we wanted, simply because the parts needed to construct the new A/C units were not being delivered to the factories where they are assembled, and then the factory was experiencing a shortage in labor... as many of their employees were either sick or quarantined because of the Covid virus. Luckily we had a new A/C unit installed in a weeks time. Many have not been so fortunate.

I guess this is a sign of the times... and we should expect it to continue for several more years until things settle back down with the various supply chains.

When your home is ready to move in, I'll bet you will be a very happy man... I would be, especially with the very nice hobby room shown in the photo. It looks like it will be perfect ! Congrats are in order... 🙂

As far as your progress on the P-40:

It is really looking wonderful. The masks and especially the canopy glue look to be something definitely handy to have available. I'll bet the side window could have whistled at times ! I'll ask my friends who did some work on the P-40 to see if they have ever heard of anything about that... now I'm curious...

I am happy to have been of assistance for you, with the information about the plane, and the various pictures I sent you, or posted here on your build journal. This is the least I can do for you. You have helped me out tremendously with the 1/48 Junkers 52, D-2600. Speaking of it, I have three projects currently underway that have a deadline to meet. Once I get them taken care of, look for more to show up on this personal transport of the Fuhrer. I remember that you have recently picked one of these up too on EBay. Do you have plans to build it soon ?

Thanks again my friend, and I look forward to your next installment. Stay safe.

Thanks, Spiros (@fiveten). I just painted the canopies with the interior color, and then laid a selected coat of silver down for some more chipping fluid. Hopefully more paint this afternoon.

Thanks @lis. I am taking notes from your Spitfire.

Today was painting day. It was fun, sort of.

First, a little background. X803 had a really beat up paint scheme, I think due to three factors:

1. It was an advanced fighter trainer. I suspect they didn't spend a lot of time keeping the paint nice.
2. This plane was based at Luke Army Air Corps Base in the Arizona desert. I suspect the paint was often scoured by sandstorms, or simply from the action of the airflow from the prop.
3. The sun is brutal in Arizona, so I expect the paint was fairly faded.
   

   

   1. Repainted panels.
   2. Oil on cowling.
   3. Exhaust

   
   I was stationed at Luke as a young Lieutenant in the late 1970s, and I can tell you that it gets hot there. They measure the severity of the summers by counting how many consecutive days the temperature never goes below 100 degrees, neither day or night.

So, I was looking for a realistic way to depict all of this while painting. I had heard some good things about Mission Models Paint, so I thought I might give it a try. I had also heard that the paint tended to be fragile. I talked to Dave, the owner of my local hobby store, and he said the secret is to use MM Thinner and MM Polyurethane. He said that the addition of the "poly" would make it less fragile. It didn't take long to load up on the thinner, poly, and a selection of appropriate paint colors. Mission Models did all of the work for me, and I ended up buying 4 different colors of Olive Drab (very cool).

I also wanted to do some chipping, so I started the painting process by spraying some VallejoAir Aluminum over selected areas of the plane. I let this dry overnight to get rock solid. I then sprayed a random coat of MM Olive Drab FS33070 over the plane, avoiding the aluminum areas that I wanted to show when I was done. I chose to use this color first because it has a brownish tint that reminds me of what Olive Drab looks like after it fades. Once this layer was dry, I sprayed AK Worn Effects over the initial OD.



After the Worn Effects had dried for about 30 minutes, I sprayed the last 3 Olive drab Colors in a random pattern, starting with the lightest color.


After the paint had dried for 30 minutes, I got ready to let Worn Effects work its magic. Worn Effects should come off gradually, simulating paint that is worn away. This is different than chipping fluid, that causes the paint to come off in chunks. I brushed some water on the wings to activate the Worn Effects fluid, then got to work with a stiff brush. The first thing I noticed was that no scrubbing was needed, the paint came off quite readily. It was then that I noticed that the one swipe with a wet brush had actually taken off some of the paint. I hadn't had this happen before with either Tamiya or AK Real Colors, so I'm figuring that the MM paint either needs to dry longer or really is very fragile. I continued carefully, but ended up with several areas that would need some touchup.





After repainting the areas that needed it, I wanted to spray one last effect that I had seen on a couple of photos of X803. It appeared that the left wing had some panels that had either been replaced or repainted. To create the effect, I used Tamiya Olive Drab. I very lightly masked the panels with Tamiya tape, sprayed the panels, then carefully removed the tape. Oops, the paint pulled up in several places. So, reload the airbrush, re-spray, and then don't touch again. I plan to let everything dry for at least 24 hours, then I will go to work on the next effects.


Everyone stay safe. Cheers