Republic American P-49 Mustang

[John Howling Mouse]

Yes, you read correctly.  I was going to wait to upload this only after it was completed but, having seen that Ron "SoToolSlinger" Fulce had very nearly the same idea at the same time with his Mustang-Spitfire Comeback Build , I decided to upload my own progress pics to date, too!

In my Whifstory, Republic has bought out Curtiss and then merged with North American so this "Mustang" has distinctive features from each of those fine aircraft manufacturers.

So, here is the mock-up/tape-up for the concept I'm shooting for:

[John Howling Mouse]

First thing is removing the nose cannon and re-working the wings.

Regular nose:


Chopped up nose:




Wings getting chopped:


Monogram's P-51 wingtips fitted to their classic P-40 kit's wing:




The dissimilar tail and fuselage will be fun to match up:

[John Howling Mouse]

Trying to get the Mustang tail narrow enough to fit the slimmer Warhawk's aft fuselage:






So, while that mess was drying, I painted up a pilot.  As usual, I'm not even sure if I will end up using this little figure in the cockpit, or his friends shown below:











Pilot will need somewhere to sit, right?


Drilled out the exhausts...harder than I thought!

[Daryl J.]

     [jawdrop emoticon]   


Fantastic!!!


Daryl J.

[John Howling Mouse]

I sure liked the way the prop's nosecone could make the P-49 look sleek.  Only problem was that the Warhawk's nosecone and backplate were set up for a three-bladed prop and I wanted a four-bladed Mustang prop.  So, some scratch-bashing was in order:









I like the finished/painted prop:

[John Howling Mouse]

But there was no escape.  PSR was unavoidable.  Please bear with me as I whine through the next series of pics...

The putty went on the fuselage even before the wings:










A long time ago, I was building this same old P-40 and discovered that the wings are not really engineered to affix to the wing joint without a lot of help.  I crushed that kit, finding out the hard way that old styrene tends to shard into very sharp pieces (my whole hand got cut up pretty bad    )

But this time I got clever and put a whole series of little styrene blocks to give the wing chord something to sit on:






Gaps all over the place, even where the model parts are from the SAME kit!

[John Howling Mouse]

But once it was all together, I did have some fun flying the prototype around the house before hitting the primer:











Then the primer went on.  One of my favorite steps in modeling as the dissimilar parts are all brought together under a single color.

Except this time, all the primer did was show massive flaws that required serious rework:















So, here's where I'm at as of tonight:  yet another series of PSR in the works.







At this point, my AVG Flying Tigers paint scheme remains a faraway dream...

[Daryl J.]

This is the way Monogram kits are supposed to be treated.

At least that's the way it is in my escapist reality.



Daryl J.

[Sentinel Chicken]

Any thread that mentions only the finest Corinthian leather bears watching.

[jcf]

Nice of Boeing to continue the licensing of the landing gear design to the new company.

[Tophe]

CONGRATULATIONS!

[Ed S]

Good looking kit bash.  You once again demonstrate excellent PSR skills. 

Ed

[nev]

*shakes head*

[noxioux]

Nice one, JHM.   

[bobbo]

*shakes head*

Yup.  But, Damn, I can't wait until it's finished!  Absolutely amazing!

bobbo