It’s a Good Day to Build a Model

The remaining P-51C and P-51D builds haven’t gone exactly how I wanted them to go. I finally faced the realization that the cold is here to stay. I sucked it up this morning and headed out to the garage to finally make some progress on both respective builds. I was able to recover the awful mess I made on the P-51C and get the belly and tail section painted in RLM 04 yellow. The P-51D’s canopy, spinner, and upper nose section were painted in RAF Trainer Yellow. I will let them sit overnight to dry and hopefully get them masked tomorrow afternoon.

Procrastinating on the P-51’s led to a little cabin fever. I wanted to work on them but the cold has been a schoolyard bully lately. To sooth my building woes, I started on the next three builds. I have had the next ones in mind for a few weeks now and I am excited to get moving on them.

When I bought the decals for the captured P-51C, I also purchased a set for a Romanian  Bf-109G captured by the U.S. It has been a while since I have built a Bf-109 and if you add that with my admiration of German aircraft, it’s a no brainer. For the kit, I will be using Academy’s 1/72 Bf-109G-14. The kit looks great. I have spent a few hours with it getting the basics worked on. The cockpit is almost completed. I would assume that I will have it finished today or tomorrow. I will get the fuselage halves together as soon as that is done and dive into sanding the seams.

The next kit piggybacks on my current builds. I will also be building Academy’s 1/72 Bf-109E model. This one will be in German markings, but it will be built as a Trop. The Trop scheme has always caught my eye and it’s a good change from the usual German camouflage scheme. You would think that this kit would mirror the other, but that would be false. It’s actually nice to have two differing kits. It makes it less of a production line feeling. My progress so far is right with the other one. Until any issues come along, I think they will be neck and neck until the end.

The third kit is Academy’s IL-2 Stormovik. I was going to wait for a little while on this one but I just kept coming back to it. This has been a good build so far. The cockpit has nice details to work with. I’m not as far along because of that. This is one of those builds where you build the cockpit on the wing section and put the fuselage over it. I will finish the cockpit up today and shift my focus on the fuselage. I put the two halves together yesterday and I will work on the seams today. It’s a little easier to do it this way because I don’t have to mask off the cockpit when I prime the fuselage. The rest of the kit looks as good as the cockpit. I have the wings together and sanded along with the landing gear painted. This one has a good flow going. It will be nice to add a Russian plane to my shelf.

Originally, that was it. It all comes back to the cold weather. I was straightening up my un-built kits yesterday and found Revell’s 1/72 Macchi C.200 Saetta. After seeing a fellow modellers Marchetti SM.79-II(http://planedave.net/2015/01/13/savoia-marchetti-sm-79-ii/), I wanted to give the Italians a try. The kit is typical Revell. Not the greatest detail added with more than enough flashing. I will get through it with a smile on my face. The cockpit is small enough that you probably couldn’t see anything anyway. The camouflage is what I am looking forward to trying. Being in 1/72 scale, I might hand paint the mottling. We’ll see when we get there. I just started it this morning so I am not too far along. I painted the cockpit pieces and glued the wings together. I will work some more later today. With the barren parts list, I should have it caught up with the other three real soon.