Tamiya 1/48 North American P-51D Mustang 8th AF Aces (61089)

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This build took me a bit longer than expected, as I got sidetracked by tasks outside of modeling. A while back, I had FUBARed the Airfix Mustang, but I kept the decals and used them on this build.

Having built a couple of Tamiya P-51D's, assembly itself didn't give me any problems. As a matter of fact, I think I had fewer difficulties with this build than previous attempts at this kit. Maybe, after sixteen years, I'm finally getting the hang of it.

I primed with regular Tamiya paint - I think it was a mixture of XF-19 Sky Grey and XF-2 Flat White. This mixture isn't really a primer per se, but being a flat Tamiya paint, it adheres well to plastic. I knew I was going to be using water-based paints on this, and I didn't want to have any adhesion issues. I used AMMO by Mig paints for the basic exterior colors: 0246 Medium Sea Grey BS 637 for the bottom, and 0245 Ocean Grey BS 629 and 0206 RLM 81 FS34079 BS641 on the top. I did try something different this time.

I still have most of a bottle of Future, but it seems to be getting harder to find, so I looked around for a substitute. I came across Quick Shine Multi-Surface Floor Finish at Home Depot, so I decided to give it a try. It worked well as a thinner for the AMMO paints, and also well as a gloss clear coat. It is a bit thinner than Future, and does not seem to work quite as well for dipping canopies. I used it on this kit, and the canopy was nice and shiny, but it did not seem to fill in scratches as well as Future. It is a milky white in the bottle, similar to what the clears from AMMO, Model Master Acryl and Polly Scale look like, but it does dry clear.

I experimented by using the Quick Shine to thin some AMMO paint, and applied it to bare plastic. I did wipe down the plastic with an alochol wipe first. I let it dry overnight, and then applied masking tape. The paint adhered perfectly, even with 3M Masking Tape For Hard-To-Stick Suraces, which is stickier than most tapes. So I used it to thin the AMMO on this kit, and it worked well.

The rudder was painted with Humbrol 109 Matt WWI Blue, which is what the Airfix instructions recommended. Bearing in mind that Airfix and Humbrol are both owned by Hornby, it is not surprising that they recommend a Humbrol paint, just as Tamiya always specifies which of their paints to use. I did like the way it turned out. The yellow on the wing leading edges was Tamiya XF-3 Flat Yellow.

I used the Aeroproducts spinner and propellor from the Tamiya kit, but they don't look anything like the drawings in the Airfix instructions. Based on the info on this page, what Tamiya describes as an Aeroproducts propellor (in their F-51D instructions) is actually a later version of the Hamilton Standard propellor.

As mentioned above, the decals were from the Airfix Mustang Mk. IV kit. They went on well, with just a little silvering on the large letters on the fuselage and the stars on the tail. The subject is an Australian Mustang in Italy in July 1945. According to the Airfix instructions, the plane was actually a P-51K (which is why I used the Aeroproducts propellor).

Build completed June, 2022.

Page last updated June 15, 2023.