This was a thread on the old site before the crash.

So, I bought this shirt at the EAA museum in 2024, right before NATS in Madison, WI. And I've been wearing it to shows but I don't have a P-40 on the shelf. So when Sprue had a sale a while back, I bought the Great Wall Hobbies kit.

Since the shirt has && on it, I've been planning on building 77.

Some of the AM that I've bought for it.

And some of the progress on it. Cockpit area mostly.

Ready to close up the fuselage.

Added the wings and tail surfaces too.

The I got to working on and finishing the Bf109K-4 and working on the Spitfire VII.

I had to wait 'til gray paint arrived for the spitfire, so I got back to this a little.

Now the gray paint for the Spitfire has arrived, so this will sit a little longer.

That's looking good Dave don't forget the ships though.😉

Nice work so far!! Gary S.

Edited May 15May 15 by centaur567

As can be seen, I'm not sure how much of that piping is going to be visible once it's built.

 

 

Landing gear is next. I need to do the gun ports too. Just procrastinating because I've added Master gun barrels and I just haven't tried placing the main part of the guns in place without the barrels.

Looking good though Dave!! perseverance in our hobby gets us to the end😉

Fine looking kit and build. What's this 81-A 2 designation? Don't think I've ever seen a P-40 referred to as such.

I googled it, export designation. Learned something new.

Edited May 25May 25 by Moon Puppy

Sooooo, that was 'fun'.  

 

 I had cut the barrels off the guns and drilled holes for Master gun barrels. I hadn't glued the barrels in place. I wanted to leave that for later so I could get them placed in the right position later. So, I went to put the guns in the wing so I could put the covers in place. (Note the open squares in the leading edge of the wing in the previous post.) The gun didn't end up in the correct place/orientation and when I tried to pull it out, the tweezers slipped and Rattle, Rattle, Rattle. Now it was in the wing somewhere. I looked at things and decided the only place to open it would be the wing leading edge. Out came the scalpel and I started drawing it along the leading-edge joint. Of course, when I got closer to the wingtip, slip, now I had a blade mark on the wing. Next, I started with the razor saw and thought to myself "this will take a while". Then hmmm, ultrasonic knife. It probably doesn't look any better or any worse than using the saw and it was a whole lot quicker. Now to close up the wing again and fill and sand. I need some practice about not holding the blade in one place for long.

 

As life of the hobby goes sideways sometimes

Some progress.

so cool. I'm building this kit as a Brit Tomahawk II with photo recon conversion. For this I also bought the Master Barrels, but then the .303 brit Brownings.

Update.

Beautiful work and some interesting pre-shading. Can't wait for the first coat.

Cheers

Martin

Looks more like leopard print instead of a Tiger. 😁

I love this type of pre shading! Looking forward to what's next.

Edited July 9Jul 9 by Moon Puppy

Looking good David 😀

The underside is painted. Ready for Dark Earth tomorrow. (The cut masking is a little hard to see.

I gotta ask, the preshade mottling, was that done with some sort of mask? it appears like it's got a hard edge demark between the color and primer.

2 hours ago, Moon Puppy said:

I gotta ask, the preshade mottling, was that done with some sort of mask? it appears like it's got a hard edge demark between the color and primer.

Yes, it is a mask that I purchased. It's probably intended more for use on AFVs but I've seen it used like this too. I used it on the Spitfire VII build too.

The Dark Earth is on. Now I need to cut the masks for over the Dark Earth to allow painting the Dark Green. I think if I try to paint the green freehand, I'll have too soft of a line between colors.

Okay, so I think I've got all the brown masked. I'll check tomorrow before I paint. It was a bit of a challenge because I made a green set of masks and a brown set of masks. When I placed the green masks, e.g. the right wing, there were 3 masks to place where the brown mask was one large piece. When I placed the brown mask, I needed to perform some surgery to match what was actually painted brown. I should have made one large mask with all the pieces to place on the wing and then remove and then place again when I'm changing colors. Oh well, I'm sure it'll look fine when I'm done.

Onward!

Neat approach with the pre-shading there Dave.

Carl

The green is on.

Okay, decals are on. They're 'ok'. I was disappointed in the shark mouth. It will need some paint touch up. Perhaps it's me. The shark mouth on a Z-M F-4 kit was in two pieces, and it went on perfectly.

 

 Off to NATS. Me, not the P-40.

 I'll be wearing my P-40 Hawaiian shirt. If you see me, say Hi.

 Dave

The Hawk looks good to me

Have fun at the Nats.

Carl