Italeri P51a mustang cross kit

[yak face]

Heres one Ive been working on in the background , the Italeri P51a mustang . I love the look of the early razorback mustangs even the often forgotten Allison engined A version . I especially like the clean lines of the cannon armed versions . The reason this is a kit bash / cross kit is that Italeri lazily only tooled a different fuselage sprue and used the wing sprue from their P51D , which is wrong . The A version ( and B and C )doesnt have the fillet on the inner leading edge of the wing that was introduced on the D .
So I obtained a Revell P51 B on ebay that had two kits in the box but only 1 set of decals -perfect for this build.
The wing from the revell kit will be mated with the Italeri fuselage and with a little fettling will produce an accurate A model.

[Jim R]

Sounds like a well thought out plan. You'll end up with a much more accurate model. I hope the fit of the Revell wings onto the Italeri fuselage goes ok.

[Geoffers]

Interesting project, looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Good luck with the build ?

Geoff.

[PaulTRose]

Sounds like some quality bodging ahead

[yak face]

I’m not going to go mad on the cockpit of this as its a closed canopy so its just going to get a paint job and some masking tape belts. One thing ive done before the fuselage halves go together is to fill the front of the wing fillet area with a superglue and baking powder mix , so that when im sanding this area theres something solid if I go through the plastic . I put the Revell B wing over the top of the Italeri one so you can see the difference . It needed a bit of fettling under the intake and a piece adding at the front but went on ok. The area where Italeri have tooled the fuselage to meet the D wing fillet now needs to be sanded / filed back to blend in with the correct wing and then under the nose just needs bulking up a bit , hence the massive splodge of green stuff .

[Jim R]

A fair bit of work then. Looks as if you have it in hand, just lots of filling and sanding. Just got to ensure a smooth transition wing to body.

[yak face]

Next instalment - the excess fillet at the wing fuselage joint has been sanded and shaped ( in the pic the left side has been done , the right side was still to do ), so too
has the underside of the nose . The canopy has been masked and fitted and its now time to look at the cannons . The Italeri kit supplies these with a section of the wing leading edge , which should fit into a cut out on the D wing ( obviously they modified the moulds slightly to account for the cannons ) but naturally the Revell wing is different . Its not a problem as I’m going to scratch the cannons anyway cause the kit ones are rubbish .

[flyjoe180]

Nice work Tony, the wings are looking great

[yak face]

Airframe all together now and canopy is on . As mentioned the kit cannons are pants , plus they are meant to fit the unused italeri wing - so its time to scratch some . I first had to find something for the tapered shrouds , nothing came up in the spares box then I thought how about cocktail sticks?
After cutting off the ends and carefully drilling for the brass tube barrels they were cut to size and four holes drilled in the wing leading edge. A bit of acrylic putty to blend them in and they were fine.
The whole thing was then primed Halfords grey , which is a great match for US Neutral grey , so the underside was left as is and masked off ready for the olive drab upper.

[minitnkr]

Well done indeed.

[Jim R]

That cocktail stick idea is spot on. It's really worked well.

[flyjoe180]

Inspiring initiative Tony, those cocktail stick cannons look very good.

[yak face]

Top colour has gone on and after a coat of Klear the decals were applied. The whole airframe has had a wash to accent the panel lines and give it a worn appearance . I found a good reference pic of the cannons so I started by cutting some brass tubing . The recoil springs will be made from coiled wire .

[yak face]

Right , onto the cannons . The four barrels have been cut to length from brass tubing , and some suitable wire has been sourced . I wrapped the wire round a long length of the tubing and then removed it . The reference pic shows about 7 or 8 coils visible so I cut four pieces of about that many . The brass barrels were glued into the ends of the shrouds and the coiled wire slid over them. It was just a case of pushing the coil up tight and applying a drop of superglue, they were then painted black with a silver tip and will be getting a dusting of metallic grey later .

[yak face]

. And heres the rubbish kit effort

[flyjoe180]

A definite and worthy improvement over Italeri's offering, Tony. Looks smart in its paint job ?