Having
recently found myself with a lot more spare time on my hands, I decided to
return to the hobby I had as a kid, namely making models. But how things have
changed! A visit to several modelling sites such as yours have shown me how out
of date my old skills were. I used to slap a model together, fill the seams, and
then brush paint it with coarse Airfix enamels. I bought a Humbrol double
action airbrush, but shelved it as too difficult to get the hang of. Decal
silvering on matt finishes? Nothing you can do about that, all part of the
fun…
Returning
to the hobby some twenty years later, I decided to experiment on a model, and
try out all the latest available goodies. Looking through your website, I
noticed that loads of people have made P-51s, but not a single one of them was
Airfix. With my old brand loyalties at heart, I acquired an Airfix
1/48 scale P-51D, supposedly of the latest tooling and sophistication,
and decided to try out Ventura aftermarket decals, the Eduard PE details
(admittedly for a different make of kit, but surely nothing I can’t handle…)
and these new fangled Tamiya acrylic paints. As I fancied a bare metal finish, I
also splashed out on some Alclad II in various shades, and a compressor for my
old airbrush which I’d been busy getting the hang of, then found I needed a
moisture trap too… amazing how these things snowball, isn’t it? I spent
about a fiver on the kit, and a fortune on the rest of the stuff to make it
with.
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Anyway,
I soon realised why Airfix doesn’t feature largely on the world stage anymore
– the finish of most of the parts was OK, but the fit was abysmal. I had to
use about half a pound of Squadron Green putty on the port wing root to get it
anywhere near flush, and in doing so obscured most of the panel lines. Luckily
they were engraved, so could be rescribed, but it was still annoying. Same goes
for the fuselage seams, radiator joint, engine cowling, in fact just about
anywhere two parts came together. There were also prominent sink marks on the
fuselage sides near the cockpit, right in the middle of the engraved detail. The
transparencies were badly scratched and took a LOT of polishing, and the canopy
was moulded in one piece, so I held my breath and tried out the new razor saw to
separate the two parts. Never done any surgery of that type before! The flaps
and elevators were moulded in, so I drew the line at lowering them – didn’t
want to push my luck after the canopy success! The gunsight was a blob of
mismoulded plastic, so I had to scratchbuild my own out of milliput and acetate
sheet. The decal sheet was also out
of register, most noticeably on the Hamilton Standard logos on the prop.
These are the sort of things you don’t expect these days, and as I’m
now halfway through a Tamiya Bf109 which is superbly engineered and has none of
the above defects, I’m saddened that my childhood mainstay lags behind so
noticeably. And after all my pocket money they had to spend on research and
development, too!
Onto
the build. I was all for taking it seriously when I washed, dried and primed the
sprues, and especially when I started on the PE details. The instrument panel
was amazingly detailed, and fitted into the Airfix structure well. The PE
seatbelts were a novelty, as I’d always made them from masking tape before.
The kit seat was a little bare, so I spruced it up with a couple of scratchbuilt
details, and a seat cushion made from tissue paper softened and shaped with PVA
glue. Not so much papier mache as papier mushy…
I
added brake lines from fine wire to the undercarriage along with towhooks, and
built the gear doors myself as the kit parts were horribly thick and inaccurate.
I tried this latest technique of dipping the canopy in Johnson’s floor wax,
and must admit I was impressed with the results.
Then
when all was filled and primed, it was on with the Alclad II gloss black primer.
Then wait for a week for it to stop being tacky. To no avail. Wash it off with
IPA, reprime, and after reading the instructions on the Alclad Aluminium,
realised that I didn’t need the gloss black under it anyway – ordinary grey
primer would do. REALLY impressed with the Aluminium in the end – it went on
lightly, and when dry seemed to be harder than any other paint finish, resistant
to finger oils, wearing through on highlighted areas, everything. I bought
another two bottles in case they stop making the stuff! I was even impressed
with the chrome finish which I used on the drop tanks – no cries of horror
about inaccuracy please, I said at the start this was intended as an experiment
in new techniques and consumables. To that end, I even made up my own colour
scheme, with red nose and rudder, and used a mixture of kit decals and
aftermarket ones for the New Mexico ANG. That’s why the stars and bars have
the red flash in them – post war. It also gives me an excuse not to have to
weather the plane, as postwar aircraft were looked after a bit better. I also
learned the hard way that aftermarket decals
don’t have carrier film close round them like kit ones do. Cutting
round the star and bar roughly, I watched in horror as the design came off the
backing paper with a huge visible border of carrier film! Too late to do much
about it at that stage, so that one went on the underside of the wing. MicroSol
and MicroSet are interesting to use, especially for the first time and when you
don’t use them in the right order. Learning curve, you see.
The
result was a model which took a long time and a lot of neckache to build (those
tiny photoetched parts again!) and it’s got a lot of mistakes in it, but I
think it looks nice and most of my friends are impressed with it. It’s nowhere
near the quality of some of the stuff elsewhere on this website, but some of
those chaps are artists, and I’m just me. One thing I will get round to doing
something about is the exhausts. Even after drilling them out (microdrills –
another new acquisition!) they still look utterly unconvincing. Need to find
some resin ones or something, I reckon.
So,
a list of firsts with this model. First build in twenty years, first use of PE
details, first use of solutions that most current model makers probably take for
granted like Microsol, first proper use of an airbrush, first use of metallic
finishes, and first use of aftermarket decals.
There
is also a list of lasts – last Airfix model. Ever. They say
that once you’ve moved on, you should never go back…and they’re
right. Sorry Airfix, it’s Tamiya all the way from now on.
Dean
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