August's Bolivian Mustang trainer - FINISHED

[Marek]

Nice work so far, I do not think I have ever seen old-tool Hasegawa P-51.

[fredk]

How's it coming along?

[K5083]

You are keeping me honest, Fred!

I've been traveling pretty much all the last week, but found some time to make progress this weekend. With the cockpit done, main assembly went as easily as one would expect from Hasegawa. Then I set about designing the decals. First I taped a piece of kitchen foil tightly to the nose and drew the shark mouth on it, referring to close-ups of the real aircraft for size and position.



Then I unwrapped the foil and scanned it.



With this imported into photoshop, and continuing to use photos for reference, I traced and cleaned up the shark mouth. The eyes were done by hand, and the roundels are type D proportions done in the sizes they appear to be in photos.



Tomorrow I will print them to see how the colors come out. I also need to design the rudder stripes.

August

[fredk]

Excellent work. Designing decals is so very difficult.
I use a DTP program so roundels and letters are easy peasy, but doing things like shark's teeth can only be done the way you've done it.

[splash]

excellent tutorial on decals cheers for sharing

Regards Splash

[K5083]

Paint mostly done. Not sure whether this will quite get done by the deadline, but it is going pretty smoothly.



August

[fredk]

Ach shure, you can do it. Best part of a week left yet, including the weekend days.

[K5083]

Thanks for the vote of confidence Fred. With the weekend, I'm actually pretty sure of getting it done. The decals are printed, canopy prop and gear prepped and ready to go on. All I've really got to do is paint the wing leading edges black, decal and add those bits. I haven't figured out why the Bolivians painted the leading edges black. They certainly weren't de-icer boots. I'm guessing it was painted with something that was easier to clean dead bugs off of.

August

[K5083]

I would have finished this weekend, but when it came to applying the decals, I had second thoughts about whether I had printed the fuselage roundels and the FAB legends on the upper starboard and lower port wings the right size. So I'm all done except for that. I'll reprint the decals and update this thread in a day or two if it is still active.

In this first pic, I've carefully screened the not-yet-completed areas so it looks just like it will when finished!



I've enjoyed this build and most parts of it have come out better than expected. The old tool Hasegawa was a fine kit for its day. It only came with a cuffed prop though, so I scrounged one from the spares box, I think from an old tool Airfix P-51D/K. I'll replace it with a more accurate one at some point.











August

[fredk]

Thats very nice indeed.
We have a time extension until mid-night Tuesday 5th to get everything locked down. Maybe that extra time will give you the chance to get the decals printed and on?

[K5083]

Should be able to do it!

August

[fredk]

I have every faith in your abilities to do it.

[TimJ]

Great job with the decals, hope you can finish in time.

[K5083]

All done now!

Haven't had time for a proper photo shoot, but:





August

[Molly-new]

Very nice finish, and a clever solution to the missing decals that I shall be referring back to in the future.