1/48 Accurate Miniatures P-51's MK1a and F-6B dual build

Since a friend of mine sent me the AC F-6B kit I thought I might as well build them both at the same time as they are pretty much the same except for the wings/armament and some extra unused drop tanks.
Since he is in the US, and this is a builder, he sent it as cheap as possible so no box, which is ok as I don't need one. Originally I posted some pics on the "What's on the bench" thread of the MK1a but I'll repost them here.

Test fitting reveals a very good fit, for the most part, with panel lines that line up very well. One of the 2 main niggles are that the wings in both kits are badly warped, I'd started the MK1a by gluing them from the centre out, but with the F-6 I started from the tips and worked to the centre. Doing it that way made no difference to the end result, but I found it a bit easier.....



The second issue is the fit of the cockpit floor to the fuselage. Here you can see that it is a bit sloppy to say the least, the alignment slots are pretty useless if you want to keep things centred so I've started filling them

And then I've added a bit of .015"/0.4mm card stock to each side of the floor


and a scrap card stopper to the fuselage sides


And now a much better fit


Another minor niggle is the fit of the fuselage to wing fit, another bit of .015"/0.4mm card stock is glued to the bottom of the fuselage and thinned a bit to aid the fit.


A test fit reveals that the fuselage front where it attaches to the lower wing needs to be spread a bit, and that the engine cowling is the correct width so that when everything is glued together all will fit good. after playing around a bit I figure that it will be easier to get a good fit by fitting the cowling after the fuselage is glued together rather then gluing the separate cowlings to the separate fuselage halves.


And playing around with a bit of paint while playing catch up with the F-6, I never liked MM Interior Green as to me it always looked like a color that should be painted on the rims of a LawnBoy wannabe, so I mixed up some of my own to satisfy my idea of what it should almost look like, basically Tamiya black, Yellow Green with a bit of IJN Green thrown in for good measure


Another minor issue is the prop blades, basically out of the box they look like something that should be stirring sludge in a settling pond, nothing a good sanding stick and bit of beer won't fix though, so after a couple of good swallows I set about re-profiling and thinning the offending blades, maybe not the most accurate results but close enough for government work......(if you can't see the difference the reworked prop is on the left)


and what things look like in the last picture I took.....

Good work and some good tips on how to address some of the issues with this kit.

Beauty. One in the stash so I'm taking notes. I got a good US Interior Green mix using Tamiya Yellow XF-3, Green XF-5 2/1

Good work so far!

Unfortunately the radios on those excellent kits are a commendable but badly flawed attempt to show SCR-274-N gear rather than the odd collection of randomly sized boxes that aircraft kits usually include.

The standard USAAF SCR-274-N equipment featured three receivers with their drum shaped dynamotors mounted at the rear and two separately mounted somewhat larger transmitters. The receivers were down below and the transmitters up at the top. The AM kits have a strange amalgam with what looks like three transmitters with dynamotors at the back. You could make a pretty accurate 274-N installation by using the parts from two kits, chopping off the front of the three set part and taking another one and cutting off one transmitter and filling in the area where the dynamotors to make it squared off. If anyone is interested I'll have to go measure the equipment I have to get the exact dimensions.

In any case such sets would not appear in the ETO. SCR-522 VHF gear would be the most likely equipment - and I have one of those I can go measure, too. The P-51A's of the Air Commandos did retain 274-N, and it proved to be quite useful in communicating directly with ground forces in Burma requesting air support.

Anyway, I will be interested in your results. I have a number of P-51A and A-36 in my collection and have yet to build one.

Great techniques on correcting fit problems with the kits. I have a few of the Accurate Miniatures recce Mustang kits in my stash, and I look forward to the rest of your very informative. build.
Larry

Thank you Gentlemen, much appreciated.

MIflyer said:

Unfortunately the radios on those excellent kits are a commendable but badly flawed attempt to show SCR-274-N gear rather than the odd collection of randomly sized boxes that aircraft kits usually include.

The standard USAAF SCR-274-N equipment featured three receivers with their drum shaped dynamotors mounted at the rear and two separately mounted somewhat larger transmitters. The receivers were down below and the transmitters up at the top. The AM kits have a strange amalgam with what looks like three transmitters with dynamotors at the back. You could make a pretty accurate 274-N installation by using the parts from two kits, chopping off the front of the three set part and taking another one and cutting off one transmitter and filling in the area where the dynamotors to make it squared off. If anyone is interested I'll have to go measure the equipment I have to get the exact dimensions.

In any case such sets would not appear in the ETO. SCR-522 VHF gear would be the most likely equipment - and I have one of those I can go measure, too. The P-51A's of the Air Commandos did retain 274-N, and it proved to be quite useful in communicating directly with ground forces in Burma requesting air support.

Anyway, I will be interested in your results. I have a number of P-51A and A-36 in my collection and have yet to build one.

Click to expand...

I do really appreciate all that info, I was wondering what was all in there and how it all looked, and it sure is a busy place. I've decided that I am more or less going to do things out of the box although I 'may' attempt to "dress up" the camera area a touch depending on how energetic I feel at the moment. While they may not be Tamigawa kits I'm actually enjoying the generally good fit and simplicity of them despite the niggles. I would like to an Apache at some point so if I run across one cheap enough I'll definitely grab it.

By the way, there is a book on building, improving, accurizing Mustang kits and in it they decided to dress the 274-N radios up a bit and add wirning harnesses. And they got it completely wrong. On the SCR-274-N the only wires visible were the single antenna wires going from the top left edge (top right edge if you are talking about sitting and looking forward in the airplane) of each of the receivers and each of the transmitters. The other wiring for the 274-N equipment was down below and around back, being very difficult to see and quickly disappearing down below, but I guess you could add it if you were a real fanatic.