Bald Eagle - 1/48 scale P51B, On the bench Sept. 11, 2020

 It is the 19th anniversary of 9-11 - moment of silence..............I am still waiting for the decals for the P36 of PJ Phil Rasmussen, so I go to the storage box and pull out a 1/48 P51 that my father and not my brother had built.  I am not sure of the age of the model, but it is in relatively good condition and decals look solid and not faded.  It needs a cleaning, and by the look of it, some touching up, but nothing major.  It is something to do while waiting for decals.  This is the P51 as it came out of storage.

Looks pretty good, but up close it needs some sprucing up.  My first issue is the olive color on the wings and fuselage.  I think it is what showed on the kit box cover since after a little research I found other kits, some with the olive.  However; I did some research on the "Bald Eagle" itself.  The current Bald Eagle is alive and well, although a P51D, it is painted as the Bald Eagle except the color is the dark Navy blue as was the original P51B Bald Eagle of the 361st Fighter Group that straffed and bombed on Normandy, June 6, 1944.

The conversion to blue begins.  Originally that color area was white and black stripes like the underside and fuselage.  Many of you WWII aircraft history buffs will recognize the stripes (which I recently learned about) that distinguished allied aircraft ("If it ain't got stripes, shoot it down").  The topsides got repainted later as a camoflage effort but the underside remained striped.

The wings are now in the Navy blue, but this photo shows two things.  First is the conversion of the initial "birdcage" canopy of the P51B to the "Malcolm Hood" that the P51B/Cs received in order to increase the pilots all around view.  The Malcolm Hood was developed by the RAF for the Spitfire and others.  The second reason for the pic is the 8 white circles within which there should be little Swastikas for the eight victories of the Bald Eagle.  The circles were too stark for me.  I had to try something.

 While not really Swas.  one can interpret as such if you don't look too hard!  One other thing to notice is the condition of the white stripes on the fuselage.  Cleaning attempts failed and paint is required.  I will attack that later.  As I stated about the advantage of the Malcolm Hood, many pilots preferred them over the later Bubble canopies of the P51D; However the Ds advantage was it had 6 - 50Cal guns in the wings as opposed to 4 in the P51B/C - which also liked to jam; however, that issued was remedied later.

But first I had to add four 50 Cals to Dad's P51, since all I saw were holes in the wing edge!!!  What to do?  Well back to a previous kit sprue.  Note the ends of the prop shafts of my USS England that were not used.  They were the perfect size.

Here the prop shafts have been snipped and trimmed and "guns" have been glued in Place.  Paint comes later.  Let's move along.....

..........This is the tail number of the original Bald Eagle in 1944, flown by Robert Eckfeldt of the 374th Squadron of the 361st Fighter Group.  Note the blue and yellow stripes.  These had to be carefully touched up with the Navy blue and fresh coat of yellow (this was a decal that was a bit lopsided).

The same was required for the wing tips.

The nose yellow was also "freshened up" as this was the nose of the 361st Fighter Group known as the "Yellowjackets".  The one thing I did not mess with is the blue/yellow decals above the exhaust manifold.  They are in perfect condition.  In this pic notice the guns are painted as well as the exhaust manifolds, as they were a mite "rough" looking.

Recall I mentioned earlier about the white stripes?  Besides needing a freshen up, the Star on the fuselage is supposed to be centered on the middle of the three white stripes.  I think that the fuselage stripes maybe slightly narrow and too far forward, combined with the placement of the decals over the stripes, creating a difference in the white of the star portion (over the black stripe) since it is not centered on the white.  My first attempt at a solution, after touchup/repaint of the white stripes, will be to touchup the star also.  Should I totally FUBAR the look, then I will have to start over and try and order new decals - which I would rather not do!!  The plot thickens!

I got my new white paint.  It was nice and thin and allowed me to push it around where I wanted and even wipe off, which I did at first until I refined the technique.  It turned out OK!

Oh, further research show that there were stripes on the tail....

.....see what I mean!

The stripes are all touched up - I was able to mask the wing stripes!  I guess I'm done and so what follows are final rehab completion photos.

Now a few out in the morning sun, which makes the blue brighter.

THE BALD EAGLE IS BACK!

Back To Pearl - 1/72 Curtiss Hawk, P36A Refurbished

 I was looking through the "old model storage box" and saw a sad looking pursuit plane with no motor or propeller.  It was camo painted and had, what Bob would later describe, Finnish markings, most of which had flaked off.  Luckily I continued to fish around the box and found what I thought looked like the missing motor and propeller.  

This is what came out of the box.....

.....Boom - this is what happened when I started my examination.  Fifty years will do that to the old Testors tube glue.  It was almost like having a new model, except for all of the scraping and cleaning etc.  Where to start and what to do?  I began my research to see the operational history of the P36.  Of course, other than the radial engine the airframe is almost identical to the P40, which was developed from the P36.  I discovered another cool story, that of Phil Rasmussen.  "PJ" Phil, as I call him, while still in his pajamas, commandeered one of the Wheeler Field few, not destroyed, P36's,  got in the air, shot down a Japanese invader and was jumped by a number of Zero's.  Phil escaped into the clouds and then was able to bring his ship down without a radio or hydraulics but about 500 bullet holes.  Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing.  A story of heroics like that of Ken Taylor (see the P40 build in  this Blog).

 

The P36 number 86 that Phil took off in was unpainted.  Bob told me about using foil which could work, but I was wary of trying it.  I did a little research on Chrome Paint, but rejected that also as expensive, and risky with no guarantee of a result better than I might achive with my Testors Brillient Silver, so I opted for that.

This is the full size diorama at the US Air Force Museum in Dayton Ohio showing Phil in his pajamas with a Colt 1911-45 around his waist and ear phones climing into the all Aluminum Number 86.

An obvious advantage of this model coming apart is the ability to repaint/detail the rotary engine.

I wanted to experiment with the silver paint, but first I had to do the usual cleaning of 50 years of grime, removing remaining decals, and scraping down and sanding off built up paint layers, yellow gloss in particular.

Note that besides the scraping the canopy is repainted with silver.

Since I did not like the molded nubs for machine guns, I shaved them down, drilled out the cowl and inserted some stretched sprue so they would look like guns protruding instead of simply a black dot at the end.  Now it.s time for additional experimentation with the silver paint.

Potential is there so let's keep going.

I started painting silver in earnest!

So what about markings you ask?  Well, I went back to Scott  (rebelalpha on eBay) in California from whom I purchased the decals for the Ken Taylor P40 (Number 155) and the G4M1 Betty.  He had them and they are on the way.  I hope to receive them by about September 14-15.

Now what about Phil?  I did not try and break the pilot out of the seat so I painted in situ along with the seat itself.  Since the gear is up and and the ship is in the in-flight mode I will leave the canopy in one piece; however,  I still want to simulate Phil in his PJs.  I started him in white.  I painted over the flight cap with a mix for sandy blond hair.  I added the ear phones using olive drab.  Now for the pajama look.....

.....At this scale, no way could I duplicate the fine pink and white stripes, so I just went with red the best I could - like a French red prison uniform (Like in the movie Papillon).  The top is short sleeve so I had to paint the arms, but the figure is in a flight jacket, so the arms look like "Popeye" - Uck, uck, uck!  He will be more obscured because the canopy will be closed as the gear is up and the ship is in flight.  I added an instrument panel but that will not be seen at all!  Time for some assembly!

Let's put Phil in the cockpit, paint the walking strips (see the USAF photo) and get the motor in, wings on and cowl installed.

There are seams to fill and a lot of touch up to do.  The one problem with silver is it never seems to totally dry and handling must be kept to a minimum.  I hope decals will show up early next week, so stand by.

Speaking of seams, the worst is that of the upper and lower haves of the cowl.  While it facilitates the install of the motor, the seam it creates is too obvious.  It can be seen in the photo above but even more so in the macro below.

See what I mean!  After a few applications of the Testors window glue I got the seam closed up as best I could for silver touch up.

Not perfect, but an improvement.  I keep having to touch up the Silver after most every time I handle this ship.  I do have a gloss clear coat I want to apply but I want to wait for decals.  In the meantime some panel line hightlighting with Acrylic.

Now I can drill holes for the eventual radio wire from Stablizer to wing tips and add a pitot tube.  I must have broken it off somewhere along the line, but just as well I can add a new one out of my 26 gauge silver wire.

It is now September 15 and decals finally arrived.  We start with the most difficult due to the protrusions on the port side of the vertical stabilizer.  Dry fit showed me where to trim before dunking in the water and thank heaven for Solvaset!  The Starboard side went on just as well, but an unexpected fold over occurred......

..............the result ended up ok, thankfully, as there is no margin for error (no extras).  The 15P48 came out of the water and folded over longitudinally!  A lot of pushing around with a Solvaset wet brush.  I had better luck with this decal on the bottom, but there were other issues.  Watch for these kinds of challenges when working with after market material.

This diagram came with the decals.  The underside of the wing is busy with US Army and the 15P48 (again).  What the decals and directions don't take into account are the gun pods under the wing.

This what I installed.  It looks good, but it took a work around those pods.  First I cut the U and the S apart.  Printed as a single decal the U. S. was too wide and needed to be closer together to fit in the space between pod and the proper roundel location, so cutting and individual application was necessary.  Similarly I had to cut the "A" from ARMY and install it to the left of the pod and the "RMY" to the right.  Also note the position of the 15P48.  It had to be aligned with the "Y" instead of the "A" (shown in the diagram) to avoid pod interference.  Oh well, it turned out fine, again, thanks to Solvaset, an absolute necessity in order to manuver the decals into the proper position.

Final decals applied and they were more fiddly than I anticipated!

And the radio wires added to the holes previously drilled.

Now a final coat to seal eveything and then find a way to stage a photo of P36A chasing down a Val!

On The Bench: Life-Like F7 bodies.

Some filler work requiring at this stage no parts, paints, tools, material, or decals, I can reshspe these old loco bodies into something closer to correct, and finish them up as UP Passenger haulers.

Recontour the Windscreen 

Open and correct the number boards.

Scribe the nose door.

Clean, sand, prime.

Drill for handrails and grabirons

Fill in body mounting slots.

Enough to keep my hands busy while Betty's paint dries ;-)

Nothing like some primer to show what needs more work, and what's good to go.
I had picked up some Badger Modelflex acrylic paint in UP Colors. Starting with UP Armor Yellow. So far, it has been quite difficult to get to spray smoothly. Vallejo thinner, it blobs and spits. Distilled water was recommended. Blobs and spits. Go with a larger brush needle. Blobs and spits. Don't thin, spray straight from the bottle, at high pressure. Guess I'll try that next. Grrrrrr....

You can see the yellow splotches. More wet sanding in small patches.

Decision: Get different paint. After trying three different airbrush needles; two different thinners (and spraying unthinned); straining the paint through a tea strainer (the blobs are in the bottle, not a result of incorrect thinning). It still speckles and runs, while not covering well. I cannot recommend Badger Modelflex. Worst paint I've used in 50 years.

And don't try the "it's just an old bottle" argument. I have decades-old bottles of Tamiya acrylic that are fine. Now I have to clean all the crappy Badget off the shell without removing surface detail. Grrrrrr.....

Here we are using a soak in Pine-Sol and an old toothbrush to remove paint. Will go dowwn to bare plastic and start again.

Progress is slow 

But it does work. Pine-Sol, persistence, and a toothbrush. Let it soak for 90-120 minutes, scrub, repeat. Rinse, dry.

Now it looks like an old F Unit that's been on the dead line for years. A little cleanup and we'll start the whole painting process again...
For the rest of the story, and some unplanned lessons learned, go to 

http://theatomfurnace.blogspot.com/2021/11/union-pacific-f7-part-ii.html