hey owen here and today i'm going to be building airfix's 172nd scale p51d mustang [Music] before starting i washed the sprues in warm soapy water with a splash of vinegar i painted all the interior pieces with the colours shown on screen i attached the clear plastic gun site with pva glue to make sure the plastic didn't go foggy there was some nice detail molded into the fuselage and the kit includes a pilot figure that i will add later in the build after gluing the interior onto one side of the fuselage i mixed a dark brown wash to apply to the cockpit i managed to snap the control stick at this point but i glued it back together later [Music] the spinner didn't fit perfectly into its slot so i widened the slot by sanding it when i placed the spinner on i found that there was too much play between the back of the spinner and the stopper piece i could have corrected this but instead decided to just glue the spinner in place i drilled holes for the fuel tanks with a one millimeter pin vise [Music] the wings and fuselage fitted tightly and required a small amount of sanding but no filler the rudder comes as a separate piece and so can be positioned as desired [Music] the join of the two fuselage halves needed smoothing so i worked on them carefully with a scalpel before sanding them down after this i had to rescore some of the panel lines [Music] the kit comes with the option of having the flaps up or down as i am building the kit with the landing gear down i chose to also have the flaps down [Music] i attached the fuel tanks at this point but i should have left them off until the end as i kept knocking them off throughout the painting process to paint the bare aluminium of the mustang there are a number of options the easiest way and the way i'm doing on this kit is to paint the model humbrol 11 silver to make it more reflective this can be coated with gloss varnish for the most realistic finish humbrol do sell a product called metal coat which can be polished up to a more realistic looking finish after three coats of humble 11 i masked the area where i will apply humbrol 155 olive trap with tamiya masking tape i then applied three thinned coats of humbrol 155 i then moved on to masking the areas to be painted humbrol 153 insignia red again using tamiya masking tape the panels around the exhaust pipes were to be painted hum roll 53 gunmetal which i thinned and painted free hand with a fine brush i thinned humbrol 153 to a ratio of one part thinner to six parts paint and applied three coats in total i made sure to paint in the direction away from the masking tape so that the paint didn't build up along the edge and leave a ridge when the tape was removed after removing the masking tape i touched up a few areas with humbrol 11.
[Music] as this kit came with a lot of decals i was going to spray the entire model with a coat of gloss varnish i therefore place the landing gear covers over the wheel wells to both protect the wheel wells from the varnish coat and also make it easier to apply the decals to the covers i applied the decals in my usual way you can watch my video on how to apply decals for more information i used warm water and microset decoy solution to make sure they conformed to the model i've edited out the sections of me holding the decals in the water and applying the decor solution to the model in order to save time all the decals in this kit were beautifully printed and very detailed and there were a lot of them applying them all took me quite a long time [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] the only problems i had were with the yellow stripes which seemed to be too long and had to be cut down and the red nose piece was difficult to fit i'd rather it was given as a stencil [Music] here you can see i had to cut down some of the decals and touch them up with yellow and red paint after this the decals were coated with microsol decoy solution to help them conform to the model [Music] i decided that the panel lines already looked well defined and so didn't apply a wash to the whole model i looked at reference photos and only applied the black watercolor wash to the darkest areas once the washer dried the excess was removed with a damp cotton blood exhaust stains were created by mixing some brown and black chalk dust and brushing the mixture onto the model in the direction of the airflow i removed any unwanted turk dust with a damp cotton bud i painted the exhaust pipes in metallic brown yellow colour and rubbed black chalk dust onto them to make them look dirty i then glued them in place on the model [Music] i attached the small parts to the model as there was less chance of them getting damaged now the kit included one of hairfix's basic pilot figures so to make it more interesting i cut off his head and glued it back on looking off to the side i then painted him with the colours indicated on screen and then gave him a brown wash to bring out the detail in his clothing i had to bend his legs a bit to make him fit into the cockpit but otherwise he fitted fine without any leg amputations [Music] i assembled the landing gear and carefully glued it in place making sure the angles were correct and not putting any weight on it until the glue had fully set after a coat of matte varnish i gloss varnished the glass areas such as the lights i painted the canopy with three thin coats of acrylic paint and a very fine brush the advantage of using thinned acrylic paint is that it can be carefully neatened up with a piece of sharpened sprue once dry [Music] finally i glued on the canopy with pva glue and the model was complete [Music] so here is the finished model overall i think this is a really good kit the molding is very nice there's some good detail in the cockpit and in my opinion the panel lines are quite nice and thin um the fit of all the parts is excellent there was only a bit of sanding needed mainly between the two fuselage halves i thought there was no filler required or anything like that um i also really like all the options you get with this kit so you can have the canopy opening close the landing gear up and down the flaps up and down the rudder in it whatever position you want so i think that's really nice the decals there are a lot of them they're very well detailed and printed the only issue i did have was with the red one around the nose um i think people might struggle to apply that one without decol solution so i would really recommend this kit to beginners and above because there's so much stuff you can do with it like i could have painted it with humble metal coat and polished it to give a more realistic finish and there's enough detail i think to keep a lot of people happy so anyway i hope you enjoyed this video thank you for watching and i'll see you next time you
