Hemingway once aid "having one cat leads to another." I think the same is true of Eduard P-15Ds.
I have had the Eduard P-51D Royal Class kit here for review. the kit provides parts for two kits - A P-51D-5, and a P-51D-10/30. Decals are provided for an astounding 15 airplanes - USAAF, RAF in the ETO, MTO, CBI, PTO.
Among the options is the P-51D-5 "Short-Fuse Sallee," flown by Captain Richard E. Turner of the 356th FS, 354th "Pioneer Mustang" FG. Turner wrote an interesting memoir published back in the 70s, "Big Friend/Little Friend," and I later met him out at Chino back 35 years ago, prior to his early death. The book is excellent; I ran across it used a few years back and got it and it was still good on the re-read.
So, one thing led to another and while I was taking breaks from taking my time machine back to Guadalcanal in the dark days of World War II for the latest book, I popped this together.
After painting all detail on the sprue and then assembling, I began painting by applying flat white to the ID stripes area, then masked off and shot flat black, then masked those areas. I next shot the wings, rudder and elevators with Tamiya Flat Aluminum thinned with Micro-Coat Gloss to bring it up. Then the OD anti-glare panel. Those were masked and the model got an overall coat of Tamiya Gloss Black. Then on to the Vallejo metallics. Overall coat of Aluminum, then Dull Aluminum for the gas tanks underwing, then Semi-Matte Aluminum for some panels on the fuselage side and cowling, then some White Aluminum for other panels. The nice thing with Vallejo is that after you have the one base coat on, you can brush paint the rest, without any brush strokes, without losing shine. That ways there's no paint to get pulled up with masking.
Decals next. Oh, one thing I noted - the Eduard US national insignia is a size too big! Fortunately I have a lot of P-51 national insignia in the stash. I'll also use the black wing and tail ID stripes from an Airfix P-51D sheet.
3 attached images. Click to enlarge.
