G'day Tom (@tcinla),

Well, you can thank me for that - as we know all one needs to do to get a new kit of a particular aircraft type released is to build/buy a bunch of the old ones.

Seriously, though, I have been thinking that the P-40 is an ideal subject for Eduard, given all the various sub types and the numerous users and theatres that it served in. I think I may have mentioned that in this blog.

All of your P-40s look great, Michael @michaelt. I really like all of the different camouflage schemes in your assembly line. It will be cool to get them all done and line them up for a group shot. White markings over a dark background are always tough.

Ready for decals now.

The photo of this aircraft shows that not only are the ailerons darker than the wing, but the starboard wing tip looks to be the same colour. I decided that it must be a replacement and painted it the same darker OD as the ailerons.

In other photos of the starboard side, probably taken at the same time, two light squares are visible on the rudder. They don't correspond to any feature on the kit, so I assume that they are repairs of some sort and masked and painted them light grey. I also painted the elevator trim tabs the lighter OD as this is evident in the photo.

The control surfaces and wingtip undersides were painted a lighter NG. This was a mix of NG and "cement grey", just to get some tonal difference. I reasoned that the underside wouldn't fade but get darker over time with the general grime and dust.

Finally, while the decal sheet, and photos, show a small individual aircraft letter under the nose, this is not present on the decal sheet. From the photo, this is slightly larger sized font than the "Hep Cat" so I created a mask around 2.5mm in height. This was not an easy thing to do at that size and the resultant character was a little rough. I touched it up as best I could using a fine brush. Incidentally, it could be mistaken for a "C" in the photo if you didn't know the aircraft was GA-G, and I have one reference that made that mistake.

Michael:

Your solid effort to get the new P-40s into development is highly laudable. 🙂

Making a mask for the ID letter under the nose is impressive, Michael (@michaelt). Well done. I have never had any success cutting stencils for anything that small.

The decals are on now. When I put the first ones down, I thought that the white was a bit translucent. However, The port codes overlap the blue of the roundel and worked quite well. So, I think that the white is just a little grey and not a bright a I expected.

On this aircraft, the aircraft squadron codes were painted over the serial number and the decals were printed that way. The starboard squadron letters (GA) look to be slightly off level in photos, but to do that with the decals would have also had the serial number off level, so I laid the decal down as printed (one piece serial number, squadron code, roundel and aircraft letter). I think that the codes are a bit too bold and the serial number a little too large, but not too bad.

On the port side, however, photos show that the codes are much closer to the roundel, and the GA was actually painted over part of the blue. So, I cut this decal in three parts and laid the roundel down first before placing the "G" closer and the GA slightly over the roundel.

The wing roundels went down without any fuss.

The nose artwork looks very good.

Very nice result on the decals, Michael @michaelt
They do overlap each other perfectly.

Minor update before I pack things away to make room for Christmas…
I used the Cricut to cut a mask for the spinner.

While illustrations tend to show this as red, white and blue, I think the middle band is silver.
At this time in the war the squadron aircraft had silver spinner forward and a light blue aft.
I think the CO’s aircraft received the red tip to make it easily identifieable during missions.