Dave Goessling
Airman
I've been worrying a 1/72 Monogram P-51B for months on and off. I had some decals that seemed good and the scheme seemed easy enough.
But in fact it's quite a challenge (for me anyway...): A natural metal aircraft, with O.D. added around the fuselage national insignia and codes, followed by invasion stripes around the national insignia.
Started with white primer. I had to paint the O.D. first, (brush painted...) which meant figuring out where the insignia and codes should go and making a sort of mask/template for the wavy edge. Kind of the opposite of what they did on the real aircraft. Ditto the invasion stripes. Didn't work out so well...
Also, I decided to try some rattle-can shiny aluminum for the natural metal, augmented with some acrylic aluminum painted panels. The spray can paint sort of pebbled in places, I removed it tried again. Tried decanting some and brushing. Sort of worked, though the acrylic didn't seem to like the spray paint...
Gave it a coat of Future for gloss decal surface.
So it sort of looked OK. But then started to apply decals using the Microscale system. Some just disintegrated, some worked OK. Ended up removing them and getting a new set.
So I'm just trying to decide what to do. Just live with it and go ahead? Strip the whole thing and start over? See attached. Now it just looks lame to me...
Thoughts?
But in fact it's quite a challenge (for me anyway...): A natural metal aircraft, with O.D. added around the fuselage national insignia and codes, followed by invasion stripes around the national insignia.
Started with white primer. I had to paint the O.D. first, (brush painted...) which meant figuring out where the insignia and codes should go and making a sort of mask/template for the wavy edge. Kind of the opposite of what they did on the real aircraft. Ditto the invasion stripes. Didn't work out so well...
Also, I decided to try some rattle-can shiny aluminum for the natural metal, augmented with some acrylic aluminum painted panels. The spray can paint sort of pebbled in places, I removed it tried again. Tried decanting some and brushing. Sort of worked, though the acrylic didn't seem to like the spray paint...
Gave it a coat of Future for gloss decal surface.
So it sort of looked OK. But then started to apply decals using the Microscale system. Some just disintegrated, some worked OK. Ended up removing them and getting a new set.
So I'm just trying to decide what to do. Just live with it and go ahead? Strip the whole thing and start over? See attached. Now it just looks lame to me...
Thoughts?
