Thanks Gary. I might have to check that book out. I’ve seen Bond’s markings somewhere but I can’t remember where. I just finished watching this. I loved this series…good stuff…
Brandon, is #106 the one you are doing as part of your P-40 pair?
I have not built any yet, but i have a few of their new 72nd ones. And from what i have seen, i will second that.
That was a great series, and I heartily recommend the book. Bond acted as the groups “operations officer” (so to speak) so his diary contains a lot of incidental information. Bond flew number “5”, which was destroyed in a Japanese strafing attack on April 10th (although he says in his diary that it should be repaired in a day or two).
No, I’m doing #104. I was just using 106 photo as an example of field applied camo change.
BK
I’m back in the saddle with this turkey. Maybe it’s me, but this thing has been laughing at me a little. I initially thought the nose inserts fit well. I was wrong and had to sand flush, scribe and re-rivet them both. Perhaps it was operator error somehow, or maybe me being OCD. The wing to fuselage joint was sort of lousy too. Sand, scribe, repeat as needed, and its a curved line to complicate things. I’m sort of scratching my head with the separate wing root fillets. Alot can go wrong here and almost did. The landing gear “knuckles” and nearby wingroot area (below) didnt fit well and needed putty. Again, some of this may have been my doing but alot of it is certainly stupid design.
The prop two piece hub is somewhat dumb, so I grabbed a new ultracast replacement. Perhaps this is why Ultracast made a new one? Time to check seams. I also drilled out the nose fifties (the wings will get Quickboost replacements as the kit’s are atrocious).
Not bad. A few areas needed touched up. Overall? Wow…it does look like a Hawk 81 to me. I’m ready for paint.
I sprayed the white fuse band for the 1st Pursuit Squadron and taped it off. AVG bound Tomahawks were done in American equivalent to the RAF colors of Dark Earth and Dark Green over…well…some say the underside should be grey, others say sky. I came up with my own mix of XF-19 Sky Grey and XF-2 Flat White. I lightened the fabric control surfaces by adding more XF-2. I then decided to mix some panel fading with streaking to experiment. I then went back with straight XF-19 and dusted it on, a reverse basing if you will. After a postshading I was happy with the results. I’ll probably dirty it up more later.
Almost time for the camo…
I had a little trouble in all of those areas you mention, but not as much. Biggest problem area for me was the gear knuckles. That’s where I had to putty and rescribe.
Still a lot less work than the Monovell.
I love the paint this far. I’m probably going to try and copy that on mine. 
Looks great! I’m watching as I’ll be doing this kit soon’ish
I’m at the sand, fill, rinse and repeat stage with mine. Those knuckles at the front of the landing gear… ugh. You definitely have me considering the Ultracast prop for mine now.
Your paint work is gorgeous so far. Keep it up!
Joe,
Following your build as is my usual want. Your works in progress always seem to be useful to me in addition to watching your masterly finishing techniques.
Today I noticed (undoubtedly temporarily) that when I clicked on your pictures of the office Photobucket was down. I have left some images on that site simply because I’m too lazy to upload everything I have there to Flickr which, IMHO, is much more reliable and hasn’t, so far, given me any of the headaches I’ve experienced with Photobucket. Just a small rant about PB and its poor user experience from me.
I know what you mean. I’ve been using Pb since '02 I think. Thousands of pictures I can’t even access anymore. Pb is so badly broken and I’m wondering if anyone is doing anything about it. They’ve got to be losing massive amounts of revenue due to these problems And yet it’s just getting worse.
Anyways, any yummy progress pictures to show us, Joe??
Thanks guys. It seems to be working now. Truthfully, I’ve never had any issues with PB, other than it being down for maintenance time and again. I hope to get more painting in tonight.
I haven’t attempted to log-in in months. I’ll give it a try later. Maybe it will let me log-in again.
Looking forward to your next installment with this one and the Hellcat, Joe.
I need my eye candy fix for the day! Lol
She’s looking good.
Lawdog - Looking really nice.
The pit is pretty fine for a 1/48 kit, and you’ve done a great job on it - as well as with all the surface/seam cleanup. Lookin good !
Chris
I can’t believe I’m just now seeing this, but it’s making my morning a lot less productive at work
Great job so far (and this is as far as I’ve gotten, so I’m looking forward to reading on after I post).
I didn’t have any issues with the nose inserts, but I also installed them differently. I closed the fuselage halves and realized I’d forgotten the radiator, so I cut the tabs at the front of the intake area where they join the rest of the fuselage (and the inserts mate to), pried up the intake (thankfully soft plastic and it didn’t break) and pushed the radiator into place. So that left me with a moveable fuselage piece at 12:00. I added the inserts one at a time and had no issues with fit on them.
As for the wing scallops, I added the before the fuselage was closed and only glued from the rear, which left them somewhat flexible. That allowed them to mate to the wings without any issues. I may have been lucky, and we will see when I build my next one, which will be a Tiger.
And yes, those knuckle pieces are the worst-fitting pieces of the kit.
-BD-
Thanks guys.
Brandon, I’ll try your method next time.
I finally got some more paint work in. I started by spraying the upper surface Gunze Dark Earth. I added some XF-2 Flat White and faded it a bit. I went even lighter for fabric control surfaces.
These originally had RAF Roundels (or at least spaces for them?) on the upper wings and I wanted to represent this. I cut circles out of Tamiya using a circle template thusly. This is the same way I paint RAF roundels.
I used the profile in the instructions for R.T. Smith’s #47 Hell’s Angel’s plane as a guide, as I was fairly certain they were all the same in regards to camo pattern. I rolled up blue tac for feathered demarcation lines for I prefer a soft edge. I added XF-57 Buff to this and weathered this color as well.
We are just about ready for decals.
You’ve had quite the productive day, Joe. Can’t say I’m upset about it either lol.
Fantastic! 
Thats looking real sweet, be nice to see the markings on her.
Great attention to detail. The spaces for the roundels really makes a difference