Welcome to week two on the Gail Ann. Starting off with this week’s work, I finished detailing the main landing gear by adding photo etch lines. The tail wheel was installed and the photo etch replacement gear doors were installed. I then spent an evening making the Gail Ann specific decals. On a few of the reference photos it shows the main gear had hub caps. These had a design on them. After some research I found out they were red, white, and blue. I duplicated the pattern and scaled them for the main gear hubs. I also made all the other decals as well. I just need to verify the “Gail Ann” matches the rest of the blue on the aircraft. Since the blue on the aircraft is glossy I coated them with a coat of Vallejo matte finish. This is because the flat tends to change the hue of the color and I needed the slight shift so I can color match the nose decals. I also purchased some resin drop tanks. The drop tanks in the kit were typical of European Theater but the Pacific theater they typically used a 75-gallon vertical seam style drop tank.
I then started working on the bombs. The fins on the kit bomb are too thick and small for the bomb and the photo etch set includes fins. Once they were bent into shape and the kit ones cut off I learned that the back of the bomb is too small for the fins. I used some styrene tubing and made a sleeve for the fins. Once assembled the bomb now looks like the reference photos.
I started painting all the base coats of neutral gray underside with olive drab, NMF, and blue on the aircraft. For this next week I will be adding the decals then working on the canopy. If all goes well, I may have this completed by next weekend.
Check out more photos and details in my build log at https://davidsscalemodels.com/build-log/1-48-p-47d-razorback-gail-ann/
11 attached images. Click to enlarge.
