There have been some new techniques I have been wanting to try out for some time and I figured the P-36 would be a good model to try them out on. But attending college has gotten in the way of having the time to spend on building these past two years, let alone experimenting with new procedures.
Anyway I bought this 3 years ago and just now picked this kit out of my stash and decided that this would be a decent kit to build OOB and not have to bother with the resin and PE update sets this time around. I have to say that I was very dissapoined with the detail provided with this kit. Incorrect to very little detail in the entire landing gear area, terrible little engine, and a cockpit that resembles the old 1/48 Monogram P-40 in detail. The exterior is very nice though (a few shortcommings) but all in all decent and perfect for what I plan to do with it. In hind site I probably should have used the resin and PE sets I have for it but that just means I have to buy another one now ;).
She will be finished in a day or two and painted in OD over grey to try out weathering and pannel shading procedures to prepare for painting the exteriors of my 1/48 B-17D and B-17E.
I am curious as to what your experiances been with this kit and what opinions you have of it, also how does the Hobbycraft offering hold up against it in terms of detail?
The Hobbycraft and the Academy kits are the same tooling. Some Hobbycraft versions have parts not included in the Academy kit to allow special versions. Personally, I love this kit…I’ve got 8 of these kits, have built another 4, and would like 2 more. There is so much that can be done with this kit…the US, Norway, Britain, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Portugal, China, France, the Dutch, Finland, Thailand and Peru all flow one variation or another of this bird. If you scratch one set of details and corrections for the cockpit, engine, and cowling, you can make resin casts of them for the rest of your kits. The Eduard PE is nice, but not necessary. Its a good kit that can be made into a great one with a little time and effort.
Here are two pictures of the base I have made for the P-36. I decided to try out different methods of making a concrete base for an airplane to sit on. This one I used Bondo to make the concrete and the scribed in the lines and cracks. I then painted the base with sky grey and then highlighted the joints between the concrete slabs with black paint and then painted various spots on the base with neutral grey and then german grey. I then took watered down brown and black paint and splattered it all over the base to simulate oils spots. I think it turned out very well for a test run. Eventually I will make a 1/48 bomber base using this process.
So I worked on the landing gear assemblies tonight and I have to say that they were abismal to put together. Im not one to normally complain about kits as I love to build the old monogram and revell kits over the new Tamiya kits ( I actually used to work for R&M in 2006) But I was really hopeing for a bit more on this one lol.
I closed up the fuselage halves and finished the cowling as well, lots of seam clean up required in both these areas. I hope to have finished pictures up by Christmas.
Well I got her done a few days ago, the end result is not too bad ( I do have to replace the rear windows becuase my hand slipped with the glue but I kept going [:)])
Anyway the kit was a test run for a few painting techniques that I had wanted to try out, the next time I build this I will use the update sets I have and do a few things differently. It was fun just to build for the sake of building a model to try things out on and nto have to worry about it being show worthy.
I will do several more test kits to test out different exterior finishes and weathering on to get ready for my 1/48 B-17D and B-17E when they are ready to paint soon.
So here it is my 1/48 Academy P-36 Hawk (Mid 41-42) not weathered as it has not seen much service.
Amazing!!![bow]I can’t believe you reached perfection in such short time! Pilot figures have always been my bane, and probably will forever be that way. But that is a flawless figure ya got there! The oil spill stains on the flightline were an exceptionally nice touch too! Very well done![tup][tup][tup]
