hi guys, just finished this bird. hope you fellows don’t get bored with stangs, because i love them and plan on building one for every ace of the ETO that i can get decals for. its a tamiya 1/48 stang. i stole these decals out of the box of tamiya’s release of “Aces of the Eight”. it contains “Old Crow” in the OD over NG shceme, “Glamorous Glen III”, and “Big Beautiful Doll”. the decals are very thin and the print is way fine. you can acutually read the words on the small stencils.
anyway, she has a PE cockpit set from Eduard which i was very disappointed with except for the seatbelts and instrument panel. a couple of months ago, i ordered one of each, a True Details, Aires, Black Box, and the Eduard PE cockpit set for the P-51D. True Details went in with the least bit of hassle and had excellent detail for the cockpit, but Aires gets my vote as she has just the right mixture of PE and resin. i also added a couple of wires to the radio just to try my hand a little scratchin’. The finish is Alclad II white aluminum, with dark aluminum and chrome for panel shading. i did a dark grey wash on the panel lines but other than that, she’s factory fresh.
hope you enjoy. i’m off to Tennessee to see some family for the 4th. I’ll be checkin’ in remotely i hope, but if not i’ll “see” ya’ll monday when i get back. have a great 4th. God Bless the USA!!!
Nice build Chris! [tup]
I have to buy me one of those Tamiya P-51’s but before that I want to buy my favorite, the Tamiya P-47D Bubble top. [;)]
I think it’s time to change your name from SaltyDog to MustangDog. [:D][;)]
MustangDog… hmmm… I like that. We could just make it MD for short…lol. Chris… you’ve done it again… from one 'stang lover to another. You’ve really captured the essence of that bird. Way to go! Enjoy the holiday… and don’t worry, I for one will never get bored with the P-51!!
Very nice build saltydog, or is that MD? The stang looks great. I’ll have to get around to building one. The NMF looks very nice. It sounds like Tamiya have finally gotten around to making some half decent decals.
Excellent job on the stang salty. Even though the stang isn’t my favorite plane from WW2, I have always been a sucker for those great checkered patterns. Again thanx for sharing it with us.
Compares verry well to my print of BBD attacking a train. I cann’t remember the name of the painting but it means "Check Mate in English.
I wish I could do as well.
Dai
I might’ve got tired of building Mustangs (and that will probably pass) but I never get tired of looking at a fine model of one, like Salty’s.
I hope you guys aren’t sick of me starting mssgs with the preface “When I worked for (this or that organization)” or “Back when…” But Salty’s statement that he planned to build all the Mustang aces brought back a memory of when I was asst. curator of the model collection at Commemorative (nee Confederate) Air Force Museum. We had a big room in the back just for storing and repairing models. When I arrived there, we had some of the most beautifully crafted 1/48th models (standard museum scale) I’ve ever laid eyes on, and this in the early-mid '80s, the very, very infant days of aftermarket stuff. People would pack their models very carefully and send them to the museum. And that back room had flawlessly built Mustangs, 109s and A6M models just piled one on top of the other, like you see in those old aircraft boneyard photos of F-84s waiting to be cut up and smelted. It made me really sad and I was glad those modelers didn’t know the fate of their babies. But we needed models of WW II airplanes representing the out-of-the-ordinary. We had real Mustangs, (sorta) real 109s and a real Zeke out on the ramp. We needed to educate people on all the planes and countries that fought in the war. So before you send a model to a museum or military base for their display, check first to see if they need it. Then find out what they do need, and build it. (I do my best work when I know it’s going on display somewhere besides my apartment.) What started me on this subject, is that one of those models in the CAF orphan piles is the most perfectly built model of Don Gentile’s “Shangri-la” I’ve ever seen. And it was made from the Monogram P-51B kit with a lot of creative scratchbuilding and a flawless paint job. And it had other models stacked on top of it. I’ll bet when they moved, they threw them all out!
Again, Swanny, I envy your skill. And if I could find an F-6 and markings for The Snoopers I’d build another Mustang. It’s my hometown ANG squadron, 111th FIS, 147th FIG, “The Ace in the Hole Squadron,” or “The Texans” and it produced its only ace (a recce ace at that) while he was flying theF-6 in, I believe, the MTO.
TOM
Chris, “AKA”, “SALTYDOG”, “AKA”, “STANGDAWG”, man, you are one mustang building modeller! just love looking at your work. I agree with the rest of the “salts”, you rule in the mustang world. keep it up. semper fi, mike
By the way, Chris, how did you do that absolutely immaculate seat harness? It looks too good to be molded on even in CR, and if it is, how did you paint it? I couldn’t get that effect on the best modeling day of my life.
Tom
