So this isn’t a story about a pilot, but rather about me as a 12-year-old kid. In 1995, Monogram re-released its Phantom Mustang, a 1/32 kit molded in clear plastic so you could see the innards. I wanted it and begged my parents for it. They bought it for me for my 12th birthday, and I was thrilled and immediately got to work.
As I got into it, the motors and gears to operate the landing gear and propeller got a little overwhelming, and I boxed it up, afraid to mess it up. My mom would occasionally ask me where the clear P-51 was, and I’d always make an excuse like, “I’m not good enough to do it yet,” or, “I don’t have space to store it.”
Then I moved from aircraft to armor, and I eventually got out of modeling altogether. So that Phantom Mustang sat in my closet at my parents’ house for the next 20 years.
I was over there a while back and picked up the kit and brought it home. I decided to finish it as part of the Mustang group build.
This is how I found the major pieces, more or less, and I separated some of the ones I’d assembled to paint them.
I primed in black, then painted everything with Tamiya, Model Master and Testors paints.
Those gears and wires aren’t as daunting as they once were, but the landing gear doesn’t work as it should, despite working when I tested it before assembly. Might fiddle with it some more.
The engine works, and the prop spins, and I do kind of like that feature. Both bombs drop just fine, and I think that’s a little laughable, since they jus fall to the table, but it’s cool, I guess.
Here are the finished pics:
The decals were a bit of a pain since the sheet was really yellowed, but I was able to get all the dirt off them, and they responded decently to Micro Sol and Micro Set. Still some silvering, but it doesn’t bother me like it would on a painted bird.
So this is something I started a little under 20 years ago, and there are parts on it that were done by 12-year-old me, and finished by 31-year-old me. It was kind of fun, and it proves what I say to my girlfriend: If a man says he’s going to do something, he will do it. You don’t have to remind him every six months [:D]
-BD-