**** DONE: GB-47 1/48 P-51D-5NA - WW2 D-Day and After - Western Front

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Looking good Don.
Leiston airfield main dispersal site is now a touring caravan and motorhome site, with some of the "pitches" actually on the former dispersal hard stands, and there's a small museum, and a clubhouse bar, dedicated to "The Yoxford Boys". Stayed there for a couple of nights last year.
Couple of pics below.

 
Let's give us an update, OK,

The spinner is a three layer paint and I don't know about you all but I play heck trying to mask these!



I took the tires and used some Tamiya light grey panel liner to give then that dirty wear look.



I tried to had brush the spinner and had bad luck on that, so I stripped it and assembled it with the prop on to have a go again!



Masked the props and shot a black primer on.



Oh and while I'm on the Mustang subject, Look what finally came in today. Been lost in the Postal system since it arrived in Chicago on October 14th.



Shot the whole thing yellow then mased the bottom and shot the red.



I then masked the top and had painted the red tip.



Back to the gear, heres what they came out, I though I might clean the sidewalls but after looking I said heck no I like them!


And we mounted them on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Yeah Don! Colors look excellent! I agree.......those spinners are a pain to mask and paint. Next time, try the initial/starting point of the masking area with about as thin of a line of tape as you can cut (maybe about 1 mm). Being such a thin strip, it conforms to the curve of the spinner much better and then you can go with a wider piece of tape to finish the masked area. It's still a pain, but in my experience, quite a bit less new word creating takes place!
I've taken the level of masochism to a new level with the checkerboard pattern and I now mask/spray that area as well. All in a day's work.
 
Yeah, I used the thin Tamiya vinyl tape to mask the line and the masking tape over there.

ARE YOU ON CRACK!!!!!!!
The decals for the nose are really not bad. To mask that is completely insane. Trying to follow all those compound curves and keep the blocks in proper size? You need a hobby!!!!!
 
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Good work there Don, and I know that striped spinners are a pain to paint, as are the check noses - done many of both in the past.

It may be the camera angle, but are the main gear legs at the correct angle ?
They look rather vertical and "tall", lacking the forward rake.
 

LOL! Well, I got tired of the paint(s) I use to do the spinner never quite exactly matching the red/yellow shades of the checkerboard decal. Know what I mean? Since I'm a Tamiya acrylic kinda guy, I use mixes for the majority of colors I spray. Their red (XF7) is slightly too bright/brilliant for what I believe to have been either U.S. Insignia Red or British Roundel Red and their yellow (XF3) is too pale, so I make custom mixes for both. Plus, each decal company has their own interpretation of what the shades of those checker colors were too, so it's literally impossible to use a decal for the checkers, paint the spinner and get an exact match!
It's really not difficult because if you look at various 357th Mustang nose checkers, they sure as hell weren't uniform regarding size/spacing of the checkers. I'm close to getting to the point of doing them on the 2 D's I'm currently working on. Maybe I'll take some pics and show how I do 'em.

Regarding the gear leg "strake" mentioned by Airframes, I kinda agree and disagree. They do look just a tad "off", but I'd also say it might look weird because we're not used to looking at a side profile of a P-51 without a wind screen and main canopy attached!
Here are a couple of side shots taken at pretty much the same angle for reference. I think you have them on pretty damn close if not spot on.

 
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