P-51D-5 KISS

Ready to button up the fuselage! Eduard's Look+ instruments panel looks much better after a matte coat and some resin in the dials. Steel belts look fine, infinitely easier to use than HGW stuff. 

LP-11, enamel XF-4 for easy cleanup, so called "magic wash" (50/50 aquagloss/water, couple drops flow improver, some drops of XF-69 and 64). 

Getting nearer to priming. Filled the wing lines with surfacer 500 which will probably need fixing. Messed the port wing profile by blindly glueing the top part to the top of the gear bay, will require more fixing than just one pass with Tamiya white putty :/ 

In the process of priming, filling, sanding, and priming again. Those wings sure are a good opportunity to train bodywork skills. I guess a pass of MrSurfacer 1000 or 1200 would have made things easier. Will definitely go CA first for panel line filling next time.
Not sold on Montex vinyl canopy masks, I prefer washi tape by far. The inside ones also weren't sized properly. 

Sprayed a coat of Mig One Shot on the wings to seal the putty work. One more blemish to fix, some light sanding and the next stop before metallics is gloss black on the fuselage. 

Shiny! LP11 on the wings and stabs shot straight over Mig One Shot. Shot GX-2 on the fuselage which went down surprisingly well (erasing a nice fat fingerprint was really easy with some more MLT, sanding and another coat).
Finally, AK polished aluminium and some paneling done with steel and matte alum. 

First time using masks to paint up insignias. After painting the wrong size in the wrong place, I got it almost right on the second try! Need to find a better way to place those masks without distorting them.
Xtreme metal was given a coat of aqua gloss prior to masking as I read somewhere that oramask doesn't play nice with it. 

A couple painting sessions later. Oramask Insignias were tough to lay down straight on curved surfaces, so both fuselage ones are slighty out of shape. Painted the black parts 1:1 XF-69 X-1. Next for some masking and then it'll be olive drab time. 

First pass with MrColor C12 OD after some hairspray. Freehanded the border but it's tricky at the wingroot and I got some overspray, will use some bluetack for the rest of the plane. 

Up on it legs, stenciled up, need to fix that windshield joint and then it's washes and oil paints time. 

And done! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New photo background test.