RAAF in Korea - Airfix 1/48 F-51 Mustang

[PrivatePublic]

Hey all. Been a year or two since I started a build, and even longer since I've finished one That said, now that I've got a bit of time on my hands again it'd be nice to get back to the bench.

With that I've picked up Airfix's 1/48 F-51D on sale and figured this GB would be a perfect fit, since the kit is based on post-war versions of the venerable Mustang fighter.

Some nice box art in one of Airfix's trademark red boxes


I'll be building the RAAF version of No.77 Squadron based in Pohang, South Korea during the Korean war. Note the RAAF still called it the P-51 even when the US had re-designated it to F-51.



The decals look like typical modern Airfix decals. Pretty good, no qualms here


Here's all the sprues. They're nicely detailed with panel lines and rivets, both raised and recessed in different places. There's also some interesting engineering going on here with the piece inside the fuselage linking the cockpit interior to the tail wheel well, and around the tail itself. As usual they're for Airfix they're all packed into one bag but by the looks of it nothing's been damaged in transit except for a couple of sprue gates on the clear parts, so that's good. Keen to see how it actually goes together.








No.77 squadron is still active these days, 70 years later and a long way from the old warbirds they flew in the Korean War. While there, the Mustangs mostly flew in close air support and ground attack roles. As with most props at the time they were able to loiter longer than the early jets. While they couldn't be expected to tango with MiGs, they had no trouble running circles around trucks. The Australian War Memorial has a good collection of photos of the unit and their aircraft at the time, and there's even a bit of old newsreel on YouTube!

[Twokidsnosleep]

What a great subject choice
Following along for sure

[aur0ra145]

Cool! I think the prop planes in Korea don't get enough recognition.

[digger303]

Cool! I think the prop planes in Korea don't get enough recognition.

Prop planes went onto being used in Vietnam as well with the Skyraider being a stand out. Plus the recon and rescue roles too.

[Tomcat64]

Great to hear from you mate.

Looking forward to seeing this go together

[PrivatePublic]

Thanks all for dropping by. Time for an update!

I have actually been working away on it but I'm hardly setting any speed records. As usual, the build starts with the cockpit. Unusually the cockpit and tail wheel well are both linked together as one piece. It all went together easily enough, though there was a short shot here and there on the thinner pieces. Nothing major since you won't really see this anyways.


Here's most of it together. The detail isn't out of this world but it is quite good without being overkill at this scale in my opinion.


While I went off to prime that I also got a head start on the other sub-assemblies like the main wings and prop. Unfortunately the lower wing piece, which constitutes both wings and the bottom of the fuselage, was quite warped. It's a large and relatively thin piece so I suppose it's not unexpected, but still a little disappointing to see.


That said, it's fixable with a little methodical gluing and clamping.


For the interior I primed in AK's black acrylic primer before spraying Mig's FS34226 interior green. I know it's more appropriate to RAF aircraft than the Mustangs lent to the Aussies by the US, which as I understand came in the more standard US interior green (or greens I guess, I don't know which one exactly), but it's what I had on me so it'll do haha. I then chucked some hand-brushed detail painting at it.



Once that was done I brushed in some Alclad aqua gloss to prep for the next steps.

Apparently these birds were a bit of a mixed bag by the time the Aussies got in the seats, being sourced from a bunch of different places. Interestingly it seems the RAAF units in Korea exclusively used North American Aviation Mustangs and none of the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation license-built Mustangs were kept around. Most had seen few good years of service before the dawn of the 50's. A68-720 itself, according to http://www.adf-serials.com.au/2a68c.htm was initially received by the RAAF in 1945 and initially used in Japan before being sent back to Aus then later to Korea.


Because of that I took a few artistic liberties in weathering the cockpit. I chucked in some black on the floor to represent the anti-slip coating on the wooden floor, then promptly rubbed half of it away with some thinner and a stiff-ish brush. I decided to hand-paint the instrument panel rather than try to get the provided decal to lay over it nicely, could be better, could be worse, I think it'll do the trick though


Chucked a wash down as well


With the decals and flat coat chucked in for good measure it was time to close up the fuselage. The Microscale flat isn't quite as flat as I'd like, could just be me, but it'll do the trick. I'm open to recommendations for alternatives if anyone has a suggestion though.



Then I did a bit of test fitting for the next steps. There's a bit of a step at the wing root and some steps between the fuselage halves to deal with.



Next step is getting those cleaned up, then figuring out the masking. But that'll wait for next time, so bye for now

[digger303]

Love the interior, you've done a great job.

[BigWall]

Nice work! It's looking great

[Tomcat64]

Great work on the interior

Although it's a shame the kit is doing its best to trip you up!

[PrivatePublic]

Hey all, thanks for dropping by! Continuing the trend of near-monthly updates, I've made some more progress

I filled all the fuselage gaps with some sprue goo. Most parts of the joint required at least some, top and bottom, front and rear. Nothing that can't be dealt with but it is a little disappointing for a 2017 it from a big manufacturer. I could possibly have contacted them for a replacement but meh, I'm a slow enough builder as it is haha.


I also noticed some more warping on some pieces. The ailerons and flaps were um, a little bent. With a bit of methodical flexing they came mostly right.



Once I'd sanded down the filler, I attached the rest of the bits and tacked on the canopy with a little PVA just to hold it while painting so I could put it in the open position when done. I had to give it a couple of goes since I kept knocking it off, I ended up just using a little blue tack since since I was inevitably going to keep knocking it If anyone has any recommendations for a good permanent canopy glue I'm all ears.

After that, it was ready for paint. Firstly I sprayed some of the interior colour over the canopy and got everything stuck on sticks.


I primed with AK's black acrylic primer via airbrush. Looks like the filling job did the trick, though my scribing could use more practice. Turns out I forgot to mask the tail wheel, but since it was gloss coated I just rubbed off the primer with a little thinner, no prob.



After that I hit the primer with a gloss coat to get a hopefully smooth finish for the metallics. It worked well enough, though not the smoothest finish ever but we'll see how it turns out. It wasn't until after I'd half-ass masked the wheel well and primed that I remembered the kit actually has a separate piece meant to cover the well if you're modeling the wheels up. It's a snug fit so perfect as a mask for the next steps.



Over that layer I sprayed AK's Extreme Metal polished aluminium. I've had this paint for ages as I've been meaning to use it but never got around to it. It looks really interesting in the bottle, it's quite fluid so after shaking the suspended pigment continues to swirl around, like some sort of potion. I read a couple of recommendations to use a larger nozzle for spraying it, so I switched my H&S Ultra to the 0.4 needle/nozzle and it seemed to spray perfectly well, no thinning necessary as it was like water coming out of the bottle.

After that I buffed it up with a glasses cleaning cloth, something nice and smooth that would knock down the high points without taking paint off. It'd be interesting to try some polishing pads but alas I don't have any. After that I'm very pleased with the results. It's nice and shiny, not a mirror-like finish by any means but it is nice and reflective.



I do think the later metallic coat could have come up a bit shinier with a smoother under coat. Room for improvement in the future methinks, I've got a couple of other NMF kits around so next time I might try sanding down the primer layer a bit, maybe with another coat or two of gloss, or I might just skip that and try a gloss black microfiller primer. Could also be my airbrush technique causing the rougher surface plenty of things to try next time!

Next step is the silver coat on the wings. I'm gonna see how the AK metallic goes under a gloss coat since I want to protect it from the next layers and my grubby fingers. Next update will hopefully be quicker than this one

[digger303]

The bare metal paint worked really well.

[Twokidsnosleep]

Great cockpit, great silver paintwork
This is shaping up to be excellent

[Tomcat64]

Great work sorting out the kit defects - and that's an awesome metal finish

[PrivatePublic]

Final update, see the reveal post here viewtopic.php?f=753&t=30210&p=379946#p379946

Thanks for the comments so far too folks, C&C are always welcome and appreciated

I left off with the aluminium finish for the fuselage, so next was the silver finish for the wings and other select parts. That meant masking practically the whole plane, mostly for peace of mind haha



Then I chucked over Vallejo's Metal Color silver. This went down quite nicely, though with a less reflective finish than the aluminium which would be about right I suppose. One day I want to try mixing it up with the colours of the panels as well as I've seen others do. Looking at pics of planes at air shows I honestly can't see much if any real difference between individual panels, being made of the same metal for the most part I suspect there probably isn't much of a difference, but it does seem like a nice way of adding a little more visual interest.

Then I sprayed some black over the cowling for the anti-glare strip and coated the whole thing in a gloss coat before starting on the details and decals.



No qualms with the details themselves for the most part. They didn't quite want to settle in to some of the more complex curves even with a liberal amount of Micro Sol they settled in enough. I then threw on another gloss coat prior to weathering. I did find the gloss coats toned down the metallic finish just a little, though part of that would likely be just smoothing of the rougher surface. I imagine a smoother primer layer would probably up the reflectivity of the initial finish and after a gloss coat. Something to consider next time I try an NMF.

After the decals I tried Ammo "Ultra-matte lucky varnish" to matte-ify the anti-glare strip and other bits. First time I've used that varnish but the outcome is pretty nice.



After that I started with the weathering.

It turns out the usual pastels don't work so well on a gloss finish, whodathunkit. Without wanting to lay a matte coat for the weathering, in case a subsequent gloss coat wouldn't bring the finish back, I mixed some of the pastels with a little thinner. For the most part once the thinner had evaporated off it left a nice sort of mottled pastel finish but unfortunately in some parts the thinner bit in a little too hard so when I went back to clean it up it had "stained" the finish Oh well, things happen.

All in all I probably over-did the dirtiness, sure these things were sitting in the sun on dusty and sometimes muddy air fields and were pretty well thrashed by 1951 but they probably didn't get that dirty, but hey a little artistic license is all part of the fun and that gives me more options to try next time!