North American
P-51B-15-NA "Mustang"
U.S. 4th Fighter Group
U.S. 334th Fighter Squadron
QP-L
42-106924
Lt.Ralph "Kidd" Hofer, Salem, MO.
Kit is by ICM.
Well guys, I hope you enjoy this kit as much as I did building it. Felt like it was going to take forever, what with my supply of flat red drying up on me. I finally had to order some.
lol
This kit was I would say about 98% fun to build actually. There were only a couple of things about the kit "I" personally didn't like about it. One was the lack of holding pegs to keep the fuselage halves from possibly sliding during construction... although that wasn't a problem this go round because I taped and rubber banded that sucker till it couldn't move.
lol
The other thing was the design of the cockpit floor panel. To use one single piece was strange in my opinion when they could have molded part of it into the fuselage halve and not had to worry about being off on either end... especially when the floor panel is twisted like this one was.
Lastly, I didn't like the fact this bird... doesn't have a great deal of dihedral.. in fact, it practically has none unlike the real thing. However, this was my first real build outside my comfort zone... usually I build them straight up and if I hit a "hick-up" so to speak, I fix it to where it works, I don't do any modifications if I can help it.
However, in the beginning I boo-booed big time, not looking at the instructions... *Doh!* lol... The kit called for the flaps to be in the up position but, I put them on in the down position, which meant the flaps were on upside down and on the wrong sides.
lol.
So I did a little modification and fixed them to where they are down AND still correct.
The flaps did come off at one point due to the glue softening the thin plastic and tore the edges where the flaps were to suppose to fit in and I had to do some pin-point precision repairs to keep the shape of the piece that tore off and still have this bird come out as nice as it did. So, in short... some "hick-up"'s but, I feel this is one of my better pieces... its all on big learning process and you learn something new with each build thats what make this stuff fun for me.
If you guys have any suggestions or critiques feel free to post I'd love to hear them. I'm here to learn I wanna get these birds right.
Regards,
Laggin' Dragon
PS- Btw... the decals for this kit were murder... they were VERY old... I mean so old you breath on em' wrong and they would have turned to dust... they tore up SOOOOO easily it wasn't funny.
_________________
Sgt. James Dunigan, III
U.S. 509th Composite Group
U.S. 393rd Bombardment Squadron
U.S. 20th Army Air Force
Tinian Is., The Marianas
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