Going down the multi-build rabbit hole...The Gee Bee is done, just waiting on a sunny day to take some photos and Betty Jane is going through the Alclad paint process. About 2 months ago I picked up the Korean war Tamiya 1/48 P-51D off of eBay with the Verlinden engine bay. Verlinden was 'the' detail set to have back in the day and I thought 'why not?' go for it. The Tamiya kit assembly is straight forward and I've spent more time researching ANG Mustangs than anything. Fortunately there is a ton of reference material to choose from regarding after war mods. The only downside is the only Mustang I can find that is untouched from the Korean/ANG era is at the USAFM in Dayton. More on that in a few.

I took a couple days off to really knock out the basics since the focus is on cockpit and the engine area. The engine cowlings were carefully cut from the fuselage as were the gun bay panels. I drilled out the rocket rail mounts and assembled the wings first. Next up was the cockpit. In researching post war Mustangs I've found that during the process of overhauling them the cockpit was sprayed black. Ed Maloney's Mustang and the Dayton Mustang both show evidence of this. I used the Eduard color photo etch set to complete the cockpit, carefully sprayed black. I used a mix of black and white pastels to give it some contrast and depth. You can see the USAFM cockpit is well worn, but I want to portray a fresh overhaul so I didn't go crazy with the chipping. It is also interesting to note that the black has flaked off to reveal the zinc chromate factory finish.

Jim

8 attached images. Click to enlarge.

My experience with resin is limited at best so a lot of time will be spent here and this is where the build has slowed to a crawl. The gun bay didn't fit properly so a lot of filling and sanding was required to make it look right. The resin Merlin and oil tank is gorgeous and will really stand out if I get it right. The firewall and hydraulic/avionics service bay in front of the cockpit fit perfectly and unfortunately that is where the pleasantness ends for Verlinden. The engine mount is close and is well molded, but it is too short and doesn't curve enough for the correct cowling shape. Right away I noticed that if you cut the mount off the resin base and fit it to the fuselage the incidence of the engine is way off. Thankfully I cut the lower cowling off carefully enough to glue it back on to the fuse to serve as a jig. Using the spinner as a guide I tacked it on to the front resin dzus former and fit it to the chin scoop for proper alignment. I then glued the engine mounts to the chin scoop and fit it to the fuselage. This is where I screwed up royally. I didn't thin the fuselage sides around the exposed engine mount. When I began fitting the photoetched cowling formers the error was glaring. On a positive/negative note, the PE cowling formers themselves are almost a 1/4" too long, even curved to the fit the cowling profile. Soooo...off came the mount and carving the fuselage could begin. After about an hour of sanding and scraping the inside of the fuselage I got it down to an almost paper thin thickness. I also stripped the paint and molded detail off the firewall so I can make it a bit more accurate. Since the motor mount is now the correct length, I removed the spinner former to open up the hole to facilitate taking the engine in and out for final fitting. More soon! this is a great challenge but this is going to be a slow build from here on out.

6 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Thanks for the floor boards! They all seem to wear differently. The vent controls always make me chuckle...they, for the most part are useless...it's just a hot cockpit no matter what you do. The B/C model is pretty much sealed up once you get in and going. You cannot open the canopy with the engine running as it has a tendency to blow off...that is no joke. It takes at least 4 people and about 3 hours to re-assemble. In modern use the site gauges for the fuel tanks make great water bottle holders.

I tinkered with the engine mount this afternoon and decided to scratch build a new one. I'm going to the hobby shop tomorrow to get some plasti-struct channels to build up an accurate version that fits. I will say Verlinden nailed the cowling former dzus channels. I've always liked the Indiana ANG paint scheme and I even lobbied Collings to paint up the TF as one...but the cowling for Toulouse showed up at the shop and it's fate was settled. I ordered Mike Grant decals for this one and I'll probably mask off the red stripes and national insignias. I'm going all out on this one...so we shall see 🙂 . The other nice thing about the post war Mustangs was the removal of the puttied wing joints and the tail wheel doors. Fun to do something different! more soon!

7 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Very impressive. Always enjoy the background education. Can't wait to see the final product.

Your doing an excellent build on the F-51 Jim. When I started my build a couple of years ago, I assumed way too much on the interior green than the black that was used on the Korean Mustangs. I was concentrating more on the markings than the overall cockpit and other details. It was after I had the cockpit in that I realize black was quite prominent on the interior, not so much the interior green. Not easy finding decals for the Korean era birds. But there are some good ANG decals stateside in the same period. And your choice markings are very good. Airfix has produced an F-51 recently, otherwise it was Tamiya and a special Hasegawa rebox as well. Will watch this WIp with interest nice to see someone do this one well.

Thank you guys! I appreciate all the input and photos of Toulouse. The guys at American Aero built a beautiful airplane. Kind of a fun fact about the TF's, they had an electric canopy. We tossed around making it 100% accurate but decided that the tour would probably wear it out or become a maintenance hog. It still won Oshkosh 🙂 Yesterday I picked up some plastic and started building the motor mount. I'll have some photos up this afternoon.

Excellent work my friend ! I learned something about the sliding canopy on these... thanks for the info.

I took these pictures at an impromptu visit at the airport today. I hope they will help you or anyone else following this build journal. These are a little better than the previous ones I posted. Hope you don't mind...

Enjoy the show ... Please tell Tom Bebout that I said hello for me !

The AIRES kit showed up today 🙂 WOW, this thing is cool. I pushed everything off the board and tore in to it. The Tamiya rhinoplasty was further adjusted after removing the Verlinden set. The good news is the firewall and accessory panel came out clean and I can throw it in the parts stash for a future project.

I've read mixed reviews about AIRES and I'll say after cutting all the parts from the resin sprues everything fit perfectly. It takes two hands to hold all the parts together dry so I couldn't take a photo but I'm really happy with this set. The cockpit, ammo bays, and gear well came with this as well and they are beautifully done. This will go in my next 51 build 3 years from now 🙂

The thrash continues!

3 attached images. Click to enlarge.