More progress. I got the invasion stripes on for the most part. I still have to do the ones on the bottom wing but I needed a break after doing all the others. I have never done so many measurements on a model as this one for the invasion stripes. A lot of work. Any way I am happy with the results. She's starting to come together.
I don't get much bench time during the week with work and family so I decided to re-visit the belly tank. My first pass was pretty rough so I am sanding and re-scalping the tank at the moment. I sprayed some Alclad on it to get an idea of where it needs re-finishing. Sort of like using it as a primer and I have noticed some areas that need fixing so I am going to touch those up. I hope to get to the bottom wing stripes and anti-glare panel this weekend. I must say I am starting to enjoy working with Alclad. It dries super fast and is really unforgiving on any blemishes and mistakes. It's a bit of a drag in this regard but if you take the time to prep your surfaces and not rush things it's just a beautiful paint to work with. When you make a mistake make sure you sand down your errors to a very smooth finish and just re-spray the area again. Micromesh cloth works best in this case I have found. The fumes and the price of each bottle suck though.
Got some more work done on her this weekend and will post some pics hopefully this evening. Landing gear is done, bottom invasion stripes too and Started on the anti glare panel though had a couple of issues with it near the tail.
Back with another update. Painting is essentially done.
Invasion Stripes:
Bottom Invasion stripes painted on as well as ETO stripes on tail. You will see a bit of a notch in the outer white panel then the white stripe running down just inside of the pylon mount. Coffey's P-47D had this notch and white stripe running down the bottom just inside of the pylon so I copied this feature.
Anti-Glare Panel:
I had some issues with the anti glare panel in which I painted it too narrow and also covered the windscreen area and cockpit sides. Ooops. So,I consulted my references and my new MMP book on the bubbletop P47D and re-did the panel and the cowling. In terms of the colours I was gong to go with Tamiya OD mixed with a little XF-60 Dark Yellow for scale effect but after searching around the net I found that the anti-glare panels on the P-47D bubbletops were factory pained Dark Olive Drab 41 not Olive Drab 613. Now, there are some variations in DOD 41 but I found most looked similar to Tamiya's XF-74 JGSF Olive Drab so this is what i went with. I faded it out a bit on the panel itself but also chose to use it straight out of the bottle for the Pilot/Ground Crew Panal on the side of the cockpit. I was going to paint this black but after seeing the profile from Barracuda Studios which shows it as DOD 41 I went with green.
Keel:
I wanted to do this a different colour than the aircraft itself. Just a personal choice really and so I painted it Alclad Dull Aluminum.