<-- **** DONE: 1/48 P-38J Hill's Angels - Twin Engined Aircraft of WWII

Nice !

Looks great so far John!

well,,,,,, good job john, nice paint job!!!!!!

Top stuff John.

Thanks for checking in! I was busy over the weekend so I couldn't put in as much time as I would've liked but I still got some stuff done.

Here's how the painted cockpit looks mounted into the upper fuselage piece. Hasn't been glued in yet. A few of the levers on the throttle quadrant got knocked off in the process. I won't bother replacing them until after the coaming piece has been glued.


The instrument panel has been repainted and the acetate sheet with the instrument dials was attached from behind. The little gunsight that came with the Aires resin cockpit set was gobbled by the carpet monster so I pulled one from the spares box. I used a small piece of brass tube to serve as a mounting pin and the gunsight has just been temporarily put into position. I'll glue it in at a later point.



I'd like to do as much surgery on the upper and lower wings before the cockpit is inserted into place. So jumping into the Eduard turbo and intake set, I decided to add the small scoops flanking the turbocharger. The molded scoops are cut off and replaced with the resin scoops.



A phototech inlay is provided for the area surrounding the turbocharger units and was attached using CA glue.


The resin turbochargers are mounted on substantial casting blocks. The part itself is quite thin compared to the excess resin so I had to be extremely careful when cutting these off the blocks.


Instead of razor-sawing the piece all the way through from one side, I placed careful cuts at four corners of the piece and sawed inward towards the middle, ensuring that the sharp outside edge of the piece was protected. From there, it was a simple matter of sanding the bottom of the turbocharger smooth.


Checking the fit of the turbocharger.


The process is repeated for the other side. After checking the fit, I put the turbocharger units away as they will be painted prior to final attachment.


The tri-colored array of landing lights on the bottom spine of the fuselage is represented as molded circles. The circles will be made into depressions so I've used the tip of an x-acto to mark the centers of each circle.


Using a drill bit that is slightly smaller than the molded circle, I created a depression for each light.


I punched circular lenses from clear plastic. It's hard to see but they have been placed in the depressions. I will paint the depressions silver then tint the lenses using clear red, yellow and blue (or green) paint.


The Academy instructions would have me cut out the landing light in the leading edge of the port wing but my resources say that the P-38J had a circular landing light on the underside of the port wing. I'll tackle that next.

really nice work John

With Karl.

Bets on how long the gun sight survives the rest of the build this time?

Crimea_River said:

With Karl.

Bets on how long the gun sight survives the rest of the build this time?

Click to expand...

I've set it aside for now but even then... it's an accident just waiting to happen.

As your past record proves!

Beauty!

Crimea_River said:

As your past record proves!

Click to expand...

That and buying aftermarket stuff and not using it! I've managed to utilize most of my AM goodies for this one so let's see if I can avoid a reflector glass replacement. Ah, who am I fooling? I'm just going to cut out a replacement glass right now and set it aside.

Thanks for the comments! Work continues on Hill's Angels. I turned my attention to the booms for some needed improvements. The various scoops and flap openings need to be thinned out.





The landing light underneath the wing was scooped out with a drill bit and outlined with a circle template. A clear cover was punched from sheet of clear plastic.


The cockpit components were glued together using CA glue. The seat was glued to the armor backplate but not glued into the cockpit. I'll add the seat later so that it doesn't get in the way of masking and painting.


The cockpit assembly was glued into the top fuselage/wing piece. The bottom fuselage/wing piece was then fused in place using Tamiya Thin glue.


After the glue dried overnight, I took off the tape to inspect the seams. The most problematic seams were in the front where the cockpit resides. The starboard side separated a bit while drying, creating that white spidery gap. The bond is fairly strong so I will gouge out the gap with a knife to allow the liquid putty to fill the gap. Mr Surfacer 1000 is used to fill the seams.



The puttying requires drying time so I use that as an opportunity to jump back to the booms. The radiator vents will be replaced with photoetched parts from Eduard so I'll have to perform some plastic surgery on the booms.


A small drill bit is used to chain a series of holes around the area to be removed. I need to make sure that the circumference of the drilled hole doesn't extend beyond the limits of the vents.


I can use needlenose pliers to gently wrench the vent loose, leaving a very raggedy hole.


An x-acto knife is used to extend the opening to the molded seam of the vent. A bit of cleanup with sandpaper finished the job.


Do this 4x and the booms are ready for their photoetched vents. I'll leave off the vents to prevent damage during the construction process... hopefully they will be a good fit.


I've done some cleanup work on the fuselage seams near the cockpit but it'll take a few iterations to get to where I want. This view shows how the notch in the Aires sidewalls matches up to the receiving tab in the fuselage piece. I'm ready to attach the coaming so I've replaced the missing levers in the throttle quadrant.


The coaming is carefully put into place without knocking off the new levers. Some finger pressure will be needed to get the part to fit.



Tamiya Thin glue is seeped into the joint and the coaming is pressed down into place. The slight oozing of black from the interior is a good sign that I'm getting a good bond between the parts. After drying, I'll go through an initial round of Mr Surfacer 1000 into the gaps and sanding.



The nose gun cover halves are glued together. I've added some recessed circular fasteners to replace the tiny raised bumps of plastic. Oh... need to add one more fastener to the lower left corner per the background pic!


I'm gonna continue with the nose cleanup... the attachment of the gun cover to the fuse will need special attention.

Coming along nicely John. I fear your addition of fastener details to the nose cowl might be premature as you might find the join with the rest of the fuselage will need work.

Crimea_River said:

Coming along nicely John. I fear your addition of fastener details to the nose cowl might be premature as you might find the join with the rest of the fuselage will need work.

Click to expand...

Perhaps Andy. Your comments have been prophetic on my past builds so it won't be a surprise if this is the case. But I've been paying special attention to the joint between the nose cap and gun cover and between the gun cover and the fuselage. These joins are along panel lines so I am trying to fit and trim my way to nice clean joints that I can simply fill with some White Milliput and avoid major shaping and rescribing. I think this is possible but we'll just have to see.

Good stuff John, it's coming along nicely.

Lovely work so far John!

Thanks guys! Some odds and ends on the P-38J to report. The drop tanks have raised circles to mark the fuel fill port. I


I decided to fashion new ones from punched brass.




The chin intakes are solid but have a mesh pattern molded onto the surface. Instead of drilling them out and replacing with mesh material, I think a dark wash will be sufficient to replicate the effect.


No such luck for the radiator vents. I had to scratch some backing panels to block off this area. I used a very fine mesh from a tea bag to mimic the metal mesh.



Getting closer to attaching the nose pieces to the fuselage. I stuffed the open areas with pieces of lead.


Based on my numerous dry-fitting runs, I fashioned a shim on one side of the gun cowl to help the fit. The seams have been puttied and sanded multiple times.


The nose cap has been glued onto the gun cowl. As planned, the joint is on a panel line and careful fitting has negated the need for any major puttying/sanding on this joint. The gun cowl to fuselage fit is much trickier but I am going trying to pre-fit as much as possible to minimize the post-glue puttying/sanding.