Dave's Card Creations P-51D Mustang - The Flying Undertaker/ Snooks-6th

I've been pestering everybody about this particular Mustang for a veeeeeery long time, so when finally Dave created one and I had a free work bench it was time to start the build
Cockpit is very sparse, but considering the fact that I will insert the pilot none of it would be visible anyway (and I don't really enjoy all those tiny boxes ).
As you can see there is not much room inside, but with small modification (cut off the sides of the seat, front of the canopy and the very bottom part of the dashboard) pilot fits inside and that what counts for me

For those who don't know the story of Bill Shomo - he is the only American ace that was not (technically) a fighter pilot. He flew in the 82nd tactical Recnaissance Squadron. During his 200 combat missions he only saw 14 Japanese airplanes and destroyed 8 of them. Out of those eight, seven were destoyed during single mission earning him Congressional Medal of Honor.

Next step in the build sequence is the fuel tank behind the pilot.

Ok, here I decided to have some fun with the build - time will tell how much damage I did [Blocked Image: http://www.papermodelers.com/forum/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif]

In order to have the exhaust shrouds recessed, I decided to cut out black fields in the nose of the plane and glue black stripes underneath.

For the moment they are only secured at the front and top to make sure that I do not deform the segment.

I must say that I'm making my life difficult here...

I rebuilt the nose section, this time building an empty shell of the fuselage first and then inserting the formers. This turned out to be much easier to do and gave me better result than the first attempt.

Exhausts and air intake.

I don't like things easy so I cut out black fileds marking exhaust pipe locations and glued black card underneath.

Next step.

I switched to the tail and as before I decided to make my life difficult [Blocked Image: http://www.papermodelers.com/forum/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif]

In the wheel well I added tube rolled from regular copy paper to reinforce the tail wheel. Dave provides optional parts for the vent openings so of course I wanted to use them [Blocked Image: http://www.papermodelers.com/forum/images/smilies/smile.gif]. The only change I made was to actually cut out the opening so when the vent is glued in place it will look more realistic.

Thanks Jay.

I just love those particular markings of the Mustang

There are no parts provided for the inside of the part 81 (the exhaust pane) - since this will be rather visible element I added some interior green scraps from the spare printout of the cockpit.

Next came segment directly behind the cockpit. Inside of it will be visible (not much, but enough to be noticed) so again I added some scrap interior color to hide the white card.

Connecting this segment with the front fuselage was 99% succesful...

Right side alligned perfectly, left side ended up with a slight shift in the yellow bands, but I'm not going to worry about it too much.

Cockpit inserted and glued in place.

I also mounted the windscreen and instrument panel shroud. It's not the easiest assembly to deal with and my result is not exactly satisfactory, but it has to stay.

The windscreen kept bothering me for a few days until it hit me - it had wrong color...

I see the Undertaker every day I sit at the computer (my desktop screen ), but I just realized that the framing should actually be silver, not olive green. Delicate work with scalpel blade helped in removal of the one in place and printout of "The Troll" Mustang provided the replacement so no harm done

Tail - I separated control surfaces (will be installed later) and added some card to close the opening. Next step of course was to join both halves of the fuselage.

I just wanted to see if I can do this Turned out, it's not as difficult as I thought

I used canopy for Halinski's Mustang. Not the best fit as it's wider than required, but that was the only one I had. Not trimming was required to the framing.

Thanks Jay.
I will freely admit that I'm sort off obsessed with this particular plane. My dream is to have Halinski Mustang with all the bells and whistles done as the Undertaker...
Saga continues and the tail is done.

Started on the wing.
Wing frame as designed will work, but in my very personal opinion it is a little weak and prone to bending so I used scrap card to reinforce it. The weakest section right now is the center, but wheel wells will take care of that.
I shortened the ribs because I will be completing the wing with landing flaps lowered. The cut out parts will be used in the flaps.

Work continues

First photo shows my method of strengthening the wing. Additional spar was added to prevent the skin from sagging since I cut off the control surfaces.

I always reinforce large areas with extra layer of card between the ribs - does wonders if you tend to grab the completed plane by the wing

Second photo - excellent fit, no problems at all eventhough this is a tricky part in the Mustang.

Third photo - here I run into a small fit issue. Both wheel wells are done as one part but when I dryfitted them to the wing they came up 1mm short. Easy to fix though. I separted and glued them to the wing skins and then added strip of card to close the gap between them. It has different color than the wheel well, but it's close enough.

Last photo shows the formation lights. It's not very well visible, but I cut them off and re-glued them from the inside of the wing and used Micro Kristal Klear to create lenses.

Today I will try to work on the second half of the wing - will see how it goes with the family

Right wing guns.

I used 102% shrouds from the set provided by Dave (again, BIG THANK YOU! ). Barrels are 20ga needles wrapped in 0.5" x 0.5" copy paper and painted silver. Black tubes came from the set provided by Dave.

Shrouds require delicate handling but they fit the wing perfectly and really add to the look of the plane.

Bernhard, Helmut,

Thank you.

Landing flaps.

I used little formers (in the center of the flap) pre-cut to 45deg angle to get both flaps hang at the same angle. Sides were closed with pieces of formers cut off earlier.

Flap skin was created from the second printout of the model.

Wing tips.

Dave did not mark the location of position lights so I tried to do that based on the photos. Unfortunatelly couldn't find one that focused on this particular detail so I might be off...

I used Micro Krystal Klear to give the ligts more of a 3D look.

Instead of mounting wings to the fuselage, I decided to copy the idea from the Mustang Mk I and installed the wing fillets instead. This way I was able to mount them without risking smearing glue all over the fuselage. They fit the fuselage very well, but the lower part required some very carefull coaxing into place - problem was the fact that by lowering the flaps I removed the part of the wing to which the fillet was supposed to be glued and had to make up for it.

Tail wheel.

This always is the most problematic part for me... I simply cannot ever bend the wire to reinforce it without the assembly looking clunky. I decided to skeep the wire recommended by Dave and reinforced part 71 with the CA glue instead.

Wing pylons.

Location for the pylons is not marked on the wings, only shown on the assembly diagram so I had to place them based on the curvature of the surface of the wing.

Fuselage and wings finally together

Air scoop.

I eliminated the connecting strip (marked as part 18, but it should probably be 73a) and instead duplicated former 73b to close parts 73 and 74 of the assembly. Much easier to assemble the scoop this way...

Build progresses nicely.

As usuall for me, I used weighted True Detail resin wheels for the Mustang. Tires painted matt black and hubs gunship gray (those are the only two paints I have ).

Wheel covers.

Thank you Helmut.

Since Shomo was flying tactical reconaissance missions, he was more likely to carry bombs than external fuel tanks so I glued 500lb bombs on the underwing racks.
Bombs and propeller blades came from a plastic model of the P-51, same as the pilot.
Final photos will have to wait until daylight.