P-51D 44-14467 Mary Mac - In Progress Album

Mathieu
Hi Roland, and welcome!
First task for this build is to improve, at least try, the surface texture. Panel lines are deepened and evened, and rows of rivets and fasteners added.
The work is checked with a black wash.

I have also made an attempt at the checkers on the tail. After a check at period pictures, appears that some squares are not square, especially on the area under the tail, and the filet. More tweaking required.
The rear warning radar antennas slots are filed on the vertical tail as not installed on this bird.
Cheers

Mathieu
Hi all,
Subject for today is mask design for the scheme, and I did one for the wheelbay painting.

There was different colors, and methods to paint the wheel bays over the production time.

In the chosen one, the formers were painted YZC and the panels left in unpainted. To help me achieve this, I painted the surface NMF, the applied the self designed masks and sprayed over some YZC.

I'm pretty happy with the outcome, and find it much simpler than my previous brush attemps.

The main spar is painted YZC as well.

The tail checker mask is tweaked to conform to what is seen on period pics. Squares are modded on the filet and under the tailplane area.

Cheers.

Villiers de Vos
Good progress.

Mathieu
Hi Villiers, thank you and welcome!

I sprayed and decaled some cockpit parts, don't know if I will retain them in the end. But it was fun to assemble and paint.
The fuselage was sprayed one coat of gloss aluminium to check for defects, guess what… I found plenty !

Not happy with the sidewalls, the plastic looks like melted cheese, and small details are really fat, I removed what was assembled already, and started drawing replacement on fusion. More on that on the next post.
Cheers

Guy Rump
Watching 🙂

Rui S
I'm in 😎

Neil
I have this one also 👍 following with interest 👀

Mathieu
Hi Guy, Rui & Neil, thank you for chiming in.

I started drawing in fusion the left console. I began by the formers, and then proceeded with the big console. All switches and knobs will be add-on parts to ease on the painting and reduce the breaking probability (even this way it's still very probable..)
First print is all but great… it was a bit rushed on my old Saturn that needs some maintenance. I just wanted to check the general fit with this sample.

However the nexts are scheduled on the brand new Saturn2, and should come out better
Regards

Mathieu
A better (8k) print of the left sidewall.

With the basic design fitting into the model, I added details to the 3d model. Formers are turned into U shapes, with rivets heads on the profile joining the fuselage panels.
And added the main left components.
In detail, the throttle assembly, that will be tricky to print and keep the details. Will do some experiments on this.
Cheers