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Bruce Huxtable
Very impressive work, for sure! Liking the variety, as well as your neat workmanship 🙂

gorby
Excellent scratch-building!

Ben M
Very cool!

Spanjaard
really impressive!!

Skyhiker
Now, this is impressive. Bravo.

Villiers de Vos
Very nice work. Thank you for sharing.

Skyhiker
For a relatively new kit I am surprised on how much flash and fitting issues this kit has.

Skyhiker
It's really hard for me to fight off the urge to correct the structural issues with this kit. But I promised myself I would make this one out of the box.

Patrick Hagelstein
I've seen that promise before Skyhiker! 😂 Good luck keeping this one OOB! 😉👍🏼

Skyhiker
I really hate Revell conopys.

Sergio Ordonez
Mate, I think you should put the windshield uspside down. The ángel does not cope with the real one as I see on photographs.

Skyhiker
Unfortunately it looks even worse the other way around. The idiot engineers at Revell should be fired.

Sergio Ordonez
Well, I had some work with French engineers and I know shit happens. Could you take a photo with this one in the other position?

Sergio Ordonez
drive.google.com/fil..J9/view?usp=drivesdk
The windshield is not an isoscelles triangle so the windshield has not a 45 degree ángel over the capot. Please, see these example of a TA-152 (and please, mind It is 35 years old and I was only 13 when I drestroyed It).
I think an easy solution can be made. I do not want any mate to be anoyed by an engineering issue. I had them everyday (it's my job, Factory engineering problem solving, known as 'shit managing") and It can destroy your mojo.

Ben M
What a terrible canopy

Skyhiker
After several hours of sculpting I got the canopy to fit better. I will continue with it tomorrow.

Sergio Ordonez
Your mojo works, mate! Now you have became a great problem solver!
On the other hand, I think another 3D engineering guy needs to stop drinking and 20 years of 2D drafting. The fitting is worse than I could imagine. But I see is no a problem for a seasoned mate like you. Great work, mate!

Nicolas
Following. I build this kit several times in older versions. The fit of the canopy is realy sh*t. My solution was (with about 10 years) to sand the backside of the windshild till it fitted. Of corse so most of the frame is missing.

Thomas Kolb
What a struggle! It reminds me of some Heller and Amodel kits. But it looks that you manage to coax it into shape!

J35J
Great effort and progress! 👍🏻

Skyhiker
Sergio the TA 152 had a very different canopy than the 190. The 152 was designed for high altitude flying, was pressurized and had double panes.

Sergio Ordonez
Thanks you, Skyhiker: I think I can remember now, as I researched about FW190 and TA152 black in the 90's. Also, canopy is bubble-shapped. Sorry, my FW190 Mustang have been gone forever, I expent the night trying to find It, just to find my solution, but I think only the reta of the TA152 has survived.

Mr D
You done a better job of the seat belts than l did 🤣. The cockpit glass on my model was not very clear!
Looking good, ... Thanks for uploading 👍👍👍

Skyhiker
Mr D did you also have so much trouble with the canopy? I read in the kit review at the bottom of the page that it was bad. I really wish the reviews would be moved up because I always forget about them. It took me quite a while to get the canopy to work. It needed a lot of reshaping to look right.

Skyhiker
I decided to make my own blueprint for this plane. So, that's taking up a lot of my time at the moment.

Mr D
Hi, yes l had trouble too, l did a dry fit before paint, and l had to take a combination off the glass n some off fuselage, and had to use a bit of UV clear resin.
I got it to fit in the end, but it's not very clear to see through.
I had a bit missing of my engine fan too, had to make it up with super glue gell.

Alexander Grivonev
Built one too back in the day, the nightfighter version. Speaking of the canopy, I like how the rear part of it is just molded to the fuselage 😄. Used some other canopy I found in my spares because the one from the kit was entirely unusable.

Mr D
Looking good 👍👍
It's a nice model when it's finished once you sort the shortcomings out.
I did get my prop to spin in the end....had to do alot of work to the cooling fan to make it run smoothly.
Good luck on next steps 😃👍

Skyhiker
If I had thought it would have been a problem I would have dry fitted everything first. But I wanted to keep the parts on the sprue for painting. It wasn't worth messing up the paint job just to get the propeller to spin. Especially since the contact points were so fragile. So in the end I glued it together so it will be stable.

Skyhiker
Working out the fuselage patterns today.

Mr D
Looks good 👍👍

Guy Rump
Looking good. 👍

Mr D
Nice to compare the two.
👍

Skyhiker
I got the legs and nose on and painted the exhaust today.

Villiers de Vos
Very nice progress. Phenomenal paint work.

Jay Dubya
Keen to understand your technique with these 1/700 ships, after a clean start - watching & learning Mick.

Christian Abraham
Looks like a great project

Tom B.
Looks veeery promising! These Japanese gunboats are interesting subjects which a nice little "brown water"-scene with that small boat should do really nice justice 👍 Looking forward to the final result!

Villiers de Vos
Fantastic detailed work.

Nicolas
Following

Robert Podkoński
Me 2!

Marcin Dudek
👀 3rd

Dave Burgess
So now the FUN begins! Turning the P-39 wing into a (laminar flow) P-76 wing! I found a cheap P-51 kit ($13 CAD) to sacrifice. I'll need to cut out and fill in the P-51 landing gear wells, chop off the wingtips to reduce the wing span to ~36 scale feet (35'10"), cut out the P-39's gear wells, chop holes in the P-51's wings to mount the P-39 gear wells, and remove the leading and trailing edges of the P-39 wing root to mate up with the P-51 wing so it matched the P-39 fuselage. Also because the gear wells in the '39 are further back than the P-51, and the flaps on the P-51 are molded as one piece not two, the rear of the gear wells extends into the flap space, so I'll have to toss the flaps and fill that space with sheet styrene. Piece of cake! (Yeah, right!)

Guy Rump
Following as well! 👍

Dave Burgess
Step 1: Chop both the P-39 and P-51 lower wing into the component parts. I want to keep the P-39 wheel wells, and rear and forward centre so they will mate to the P-39 fuselage

Dave Burgess
Step 2: I re-sorted the wing components to prepare assembling the XP-39E/P-76 wing.

Dave Burgess
Step 3: glue all the bits together; re-invorced with styrene strip

Dave Burgess
Step 4: a WHOLE BUNCH of puttying! in retrospect I probably didn't need to do so much disassembling of the P-39 wing, but I wasn't sure where it was going at the time.

Dave Burgess
Step 5: Now I have to chop the tail off the P-39 and fit on the P-51 tail. I think this will probably be the easiest approach here. I also have to lengthen the fuselage by 24 inches or 24/72 - 1/3". Fortunately the rear and front of the wing bottom match up well to the fuselage wing fillets, suggesting to me that my wing mods were pretty accurate.

Robert Podkoński
Photos #4-6 terrified me... 😉 Great job, Dave!

Dave Burgess
Thanks, Robert. Y'know, the first time I decided to to a mod that required me to cut up a new kit, that was EXACTLY my reaction. I was terrified that I was going to destroy a perfectly good kit and have to throw it away. And that was only one kit - this one required me to cut up TWO!. Several decades of model building and multiple mods have given me the confidence to do these mods, knowing that while it may look a hot mess when it's in progress, with a little sheet styrene and some putty, I can pull it off, and most people wouldn't be the wiser.

Dave Burgess
Step 6: Wing and fuselage have now been modified for XP-39E / P-76; Still looking a bit rough; some sanding to do before I mate the wing & fuselage.

Dave Burgess
Step 7: Modified fuselage mated to modified wing. more putty applied. I have to sand down the wing fillets, a couple of low spots on the wing underside, and feather in the new (P-51) tail into the rest of the fuselage. Then, my favourite job: painting and decaling! I'm still trying to decide whether to just paint the XP-39E as it is in the photos, or dress it up as a P-76 in US or Soviet markings (which is probably where the P-76 would have ended up). I'm leaning towards the latter, because the only photo I could find of the XP-39E is this B&W one.

Dave Burgess
Three more rounds of putty & sanding to smooth out some rough patches; Canopy masked and attached; ready for airbrushing!

Robert Podkoński
Looks great already. Fantastic job, Dave!

Dave Burgess
So there it is folks! After a long chop, putty, much sanding, and just generally fiddling about, a P-39D converted to a XP-39E / P-76. Bell never actually got a contract for the Bell- P-76, which was what the XP-39E was to be designated when it entered production. However the production contract for 4000 aircraft was cancelled (to allow Bell Aircraft to concentrate on bomber production), but much of the development of the XP-39E ended up in the P-63, including the more powerful engine, lengthened fuselage and wings, and I believe the supercharger which was removed from the P-39's design, which was restored. The one adaptation in the XP-39E that DIDN'T get incorporated into the P-63 was the straight (clipped) wing tips and tail surfaces. All-in-all, it was a REALLY fun build, especially watching the ugly duck grow into a swan!

Guy Rump
Great job and very interesting, congrats! 👍

Robert Podkoński
That was quick! Fantastic job, Dave!

Marcin Dudek
Wow, impressive effect. Congrtatulations 👏

Dave Burgess
Thanks, folks! I've got another one upcoming in the next few months - gonna take the Execuform 1:72 XP-54 Swoose, and convert it into the XP-68 Tornado. Vultee was going to upgrade the engine to drive contra-rotating pusher props. The project neverr left the drawing board, and the XP-54 project was canceled.
It involves a) working with the very BASIC Execuform kit, and modifying the fuselage to include intake scoops in the fuselage above/behind the canopy, and modifying the vertical stabs to a more rounded appearance. First tho, I have a number of Anigrand resin kits to complete in this US Fighters series.

Villiers de Vos
Fantastic work.