P-38 Lightning
- Subject:
Lockheed P-38J Lightning
US Army Air Forces (1941-1947)
475 FG 100 (Col. Charles H. MacDonald)
World War 2
NMF- Scale:
- 1:48
- Status:
- In progress
- Started:
- April 15, 2015
- Time spent:
- 31
This is probably the third or so P 38 I've built, because over the years all the others were destroyed. It is my favorite fighter from WWII. This version from Academy was very nice, even though, due to shipping, the rear landing gear on both sides was broken, so I had to replace it with metal landing gear. The only metal landing gear I found was for the Monogram kit and I had to do some cutting and stuff to even make them fit, but in the end I think it worked out OK, but I am not sure if the front landing gear is still too tall, it seems that the tail is pretty close to the ground. The decals are terrible, almost all of the bigger decals like the roundels and the stripes on the tail and fuselage cracked and peeled from the model after about 2 months. This is after I used both microsol and microset when I put them on and after I noticed the peeling I used microsol again and this is the first model where they did not really work. Even though the decals looked really great on the paper, I am going to have to strip half of em off and replace them with new ones.
Project inventory
Full kits
Detail and Conversion sets
Decals
Photoalbums
1+Comments
Christopher MullinsNew decals are there, and old ones stripped off. Wasnt exactly an easy job though but I got it done.
Christopher MullinsSo the decals that came with the model sucked. I bought new decals, they sucked too, fell apart when they hit the water. The original ones had the wrong blue, pictures on the internet from the real bird show a dark blue. The new decals had a similar color, so now I am going to paint them on the best I can. Really they look better painted on than with decals most the time, but painting stripes is a real challenge, even with masking them because getting them strait is pretty hard, at least for me. Also, the instructions didn't show any colors for the propeller hubs, but the pictures of the bird on the internet show that they are white with the red, yellow, and blue stripes as well.I painted the blue stripes on already, they look good I think except for the band on the fuselage, they turned out way too thin and not very even. I will upload pictures when I get it looking decent again. I also plan on finding a better model and doing a green over grey camo job with a certain nose-art that I like.
Christopher MullinsI dont know if I should even finish this or just go get the Tamiya one, or maybe two of them because I have a decals sheet with a cool OD Green version too. but they cost a lot, not sure, this kit is terrible though.