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Curtis P-40N Kittyhawk "Gloria Lyons", NZ3220, of No 4 Servicing Unit and flown by 18 Squadron RNZAF, June/July 1944
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Hasegawa's P-40's are a pretty simple to build and build into a excellent kit straight out of the box. The only fitting issues I encountered were the tail sections and the bit behind the cockpit, and these weren't to difficult to solve. Hasegawa did these so they can use the same basic front fuselage for all models of the P-40E onwards. The only things I didn't like out of the box was the seat and the wheels, The wheels are wrong for the P-40N. I couldn't find a true details seat alone so I ended up with the True Details cockpit for the P-40N. In my limited experience this is the best value resin cockpit I've seen, I wish I'd taken some photos before I'd assembled it. The Hasegawa cockpit isn't bad all all but for $14 AUD I'd highly recommend the True Details one. The cockpit set doesn't come with a instrument panel so you have to use the kit one, which is very nice. I went with the decals for the panel because I really can't paint instrument panels (I envy those of you who can). To correct the wheels I used the new Ultracast P-40N wheels. As with all Ultracast resin they are superb. Being a kiwi and ex RNZAF I have a thing for RNZAF aircraft. I managed to get hold of the "Gloria Lyons" decals from Aeromaster Sheet 48-10 (RNZAF in the Pacific), so this was the aircraft I decided to model. |
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The Build |
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The photos below show the True Details cockpit complete and dry fitted to the fuselage. Getting the cockpit to fit wasn't to difficult but it does take patience (one thing I'm short of) and a fair bit of dry fitting. You also need some good references so you can work out were it should sit. I really made a meal of this and had to use plastic card to fix some stuff ups. Remember, check twice cut one :-). You also have to use the Kit When I build another Hasegawa P-40 I will ignore the instructions and assemble the tail sections to the fuselage and then join the completed halves together, rather than assemble the tail section and forward fuselage as per the instructions. A bit of putty was needed to smooth out the forward fuselage/tail section joins and the rear cockpit section to fuselage join. I also has some re-scribing to do.
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It was about now I discovered a major flaw in my plan. Despite having looked at http://rnzaf.hobbyvista.com/gl.html I hadn't noticed Gloria Lyons on the Aeromaster Sheet was a P-40N-1 with the P-40M/K rear cockpit. Thankfully there were 4 aircraft named Gloria Lyons (3 P-40's and Corsair) and Gloria Lyons the 3rd was a P-40N-20 which fitted the kits. I just had to use some individual tail number decals, which I had. The kit was painted with Humbrol 155 Olive Drab mixed with about 10% white and Humbrol 128 for the underside. I also post shaded a few panels with a lighter mix of Olive drab. I tried pre-shading but with the dark colours I just didn't work. The usual coat of Kleer was applied then the decals. Unfortunately there was quite a bit of silvering, probably because I didn't get a decent enough coat of Kleer on the kit, but with Hasegawa's really fine lines I find it easy to overdo it and fill up the line with Kleer. Also the the locations for the lower surface roundels on the Aeromaster decal sheet didn't match up (in my eyes) with the location in the picture I had of the aircraft, so I went with what I thought was right. Another coat of Kleer then an enamel wash of a mixture of whatever browns I had lying around. After this was cleaned of it was sealed with a coat of Gunze Cleat flat and some weathering with pastel chalks and a Silver artists pencil. many of the RNZAF P-40's were pretty heavily weather, operating piston aircraft of coral runways meant plenty of little chips. These were sealed with another coat of Gunze flat In conclusion despite the silvering and a few other things I stuffed up, I'm fairly happy with the result, although I must admit I'm not entirely satisfied. If I don't get side tracked, I'm considering getting some aftermarket PSP and doing a little Pacific diorama. Also I'd like to put out a public thanks to Pete and his web site, http://rnzaf.hobbyvista.com/index.html . It is the best site for RNZAF pacific war subjects and I used it extensively, along with RNZAF The first decade: by Charles Darby..
Postscript: The Repair Job (12 months
Later) |
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I built this kit about 12 months ago and the decals silvered badly. Particularly the serial numbers which were individual numbers applied individually These pictures give some indication of how bad it was, but it actually was a lot worse. there was also a lot of silvering between the G in Gloria. (the slivering in G was fixed by paintshop pro in this picture) To fix the serial numbers
I removed the old decals, used insulation tape which got most of them off. The
rest was removed by sanding with 1500-2000 grade wet and dry. Unfortunately I
also ripped the white stripe of of one of the roundels. For the silvering around the G in Gloria I just took to that with a sharp No 11 blade and picked the decal film away. I've got rid of the worst of it but there is still a little there that I wasn't game to attack. I applied a coat of clear to seal it and again it looked good. All that was needed now is the usual washes, weathering and flat coats. These were applied as above. |
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Photography I've been spending
a bit of time getting to know my camera, I took about 200 shots of this kit
trying to get some good photos. As usual I didn't read the instructions until
well into the piece. Once I'd used some the advanced settings an manually
set the white balance I managed to get these shots which I'm happy with. These
where taken with a Panasonic FZ-30 camera, with aperture at F11, the shutter
speed was manually set. Lighting was 4 white energy savers with a white card as
background. Images were resized with paintshop pro X but no other post
processing was done. |
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The (New) Pictures Click on the thumbnail for a better look
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