This kit was built pretty much OOB (out of the box) from the Hasegawa 1/72^nd P-51D Mustang, which I still consider to be the most accurate in shape and easiest to build.

Construction started with the cockpit, which is pretty much as supplied in the kit. The only changes I made were some etched seat belts from the spares box, and after painting and installation into the fuselage, added a small square of clear sheet for the top of the gunsight. The canopy cross brace also had the lightening holes drilled out.

One shortcoming of this kit is the shallow wheel wells, which I decided to do nothing about in this build. The main gear doors were glued closed to help hide this fault. While I was working on the wings, I added sway braces from copper wire, drilled out the recognition lights under the starboard wing, and added zero length rocket launcher stubs as fitted to many IAF Mustangs.

I filed out the opening for the smaller, forward radiator vent door, and even though it can’t be seen very well on the finished model, scratchbuilt the rear radiator face inside the large, rear louvre door from etched mesh and styrene strips to help hide the join. The tail and wingtip nav. lights were also removed to be replaced later on.

Once fully assembled, the spinner was painted yellow and masked, before painting the underside in Gunze Sangyo H417 (RLM76 Hellblau). Gunze acrylics are my paint of choice for airbrushing for ease of use and clean up. According to all my IAF sources, the camouflage of the period was glossy and masked with hard edges. I used some artistic license and used paper masks for the upper surface colours to give a “hard feathered” edge. The tan is custom mixed to match period colours. My recipe is 25% White (H316) + 25% Dark Earth (H72) +50% Khaki (H81). The blue is Gunze H326 (FS15044 – USAF Thunderbird Blue). The paint was sealed with Gunze clear gloss varnish before decalling. 

Decals are from IsraDecal, and include the fuselage and wing Suez Crisis stripes which all settled down nicely using the Microscale/Superscale system. Kit decals were used for the prop logos, though in real life, these were probably long gone by the time the aircraft entered IAF service.

Final touches included:

·        tinted clear resin wingtip nav. lights from CMK

·        5-minute clear epoxy (tinted where necessary) for the underwing ID and tail nav. lights

·        stretched sprue radio wire and then canopy (tricky operation – sprue first glued to radio and then to the rear of the seat, passed through hole in canopy, canopy glued in place and then sprue glued to the tail; finally, heated using hot knife blade to tighten sprue and small drop of white glue used to simulate insulator)

·        last 4 underwing rocket stubs (the black coloured stubs) and pitot over the Suez stripes

·        painting wheel wells, gear legs and tyres

·        weathering using Windsor and Newton oil paint wash, airbrushed thinned Gunze flat black for exhaust and gun stains, and chipped paint using fine brush and silver-grey paint (and LOTS of patience)

 The model was sealed with a final coat of Gunze varnish (75% flat + 25% gloss). 

Craig