P-51B Mustang "OLE-II"

Great looking airplane; even better story. Major Howard had two P-51Bs painted like this (with minor differences), so I’ll be doing the birdcage canopy version because the decals most closely represent that plane  

Stole a seat from my Eduard “Royal Kit” P-51Bs—will use the PE belts too. Those kits are great for spares!  

Slow going. And no, I didn’t clean up the ejector pin marks. They wont be visible.  

Used an AK weathering pencil to achieve scratches…very unhappy with the result. May erase and start over. The result is extremely faint and only visible in perfect lighting, even on matte paint.  

Chipping with a 20/0 brush and Model Master enamel Chrome Silver. Needs practice…too uniform.  

The panel got the usual drybrushing and detail painting. Gloss in the instruments. Very satisfying.  

Cockpit ready to close up. Seat and PE seatbelts are spares from the new Eduard “Royal Kit” P-51B.  

 

Green for the canopy frame… 

Should be able to get some fading effects with these. First time trying this…we’ll see how it goes.  

Reference picture #1 

Reference picture #2 

Mr. Surfacer 1500 primer and the hidden portion of the flaps painted natural metal. 

Camera exaggerates the effect. First time trying this. Hopefully it looks good under a varnish and oil wash.  

Every build has a point where I wish I just built models in opaque base colors and factory fresh weathering. Today I hit that point. The nice bright spray booth lights fooled me into thinking I was leaving a nice mottled/faded base coat. But no, out in normal light it looks completely even and opaque.  

And subsequent colors added per the earlier picture of the paints used did nothing (not shown here).

On to Plan B….once I figure out what plan b is.  

Got a chance to try and rebuild some of the paint variation. Sprayed the base coat of OD 41 in a mottling pattern overall, with an emphasis on the wing roots and engine area.  

Masked and sprayed the white.  

 

Coming along. Visibility of paint variation depends on lighting.  

Chipped the white, added chipping and primer chips on the wing roots, sprayed Mr. Color GX100 gloss.  

 

Change of plans: these decals are horrible. Applied half of them, allowed to dry, and decided they were too bad to keep. Removed and used the Tamiya kit decals for OLE-II.  

Not using Peddinghaus decals again. Extremely thick, poor opacity, continuous film, and misprinted insignias and markings. The painting and decal guide was wrong in nearly every conceivable way.  

 

Much better.