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Tally-Ho Scale Models
The 1/48 scale Hasegawa kit I used for this build is a fairly old one but the company did a fine job with it when compared it to my tamiya kit which is considered the best Thunderbolt in this scale. It's pretty close dimensionally and the fit is very good. I would say the Hasegawa Tbolts are probably the next best kits out there after the newer Tamiya kits. On the downside you don't get much extras with the kit like you would with the Tamiya kit or the re-boxed Academy/Eduard offering but it is generally lower priced that the other two kits . I think I picked this one up for $18. Any way on with the build.
First some reference photos of Colonal Robert Coffey Jr. and his mount.
Republic P-47D-25 "Coffey's Pot"
The Kit & Accessories
This Hasegawa kit is one of the older kits on the market. In fact you may even no longer be able to get this boxing but don't let the age of the kit fool you. Its well put together and while it lacks the finesse of the new Tamiya kits it still a fine kit with no fit issues. Accessories are minimal as it only comes with a set of Curtis electric props (standard and paddle blade) no photoetch, and only has a set of bombs and the less often used flat 200 gallon fuel tank.
Cockpit build
As usual everything starts with the cockpt being built. The interior of P-47's built by the Farmingdale and Evansville plants used a colour called Dark Dull Green, a colour term popular with modelers today. Back then it was probably just called cockpit green. Based on some of my recent research and reading, the cockpits were actually painted Chromate Yellow first then Dark Dull Green was painted over the Yellow chromate as a completion step. This process doesn't seem peculiar to the P-47 either as it can been on some Vintage F6F Grumman Hellcats too. The colour can be a minefield of opinion with some referring to it simply as Bronze Green. At any rate I attempted to match the colour references I have of Dark Dull green by using 3 separate Vallejo colours which I thinned with AK interactive thinner and some water. I used Gun Metal Blue, Olive green and German Tanker Field Grau. I am not exactly sure of the ratios but to give the colour a bit more of a metallic blue green shade I used more Gun Metal in my mix.. It's a bit lighter than the DDG in my reference photos(taken from an actual non-restored P47) but given the lighting and scale effect I thought it looked good.
I also used the AK interactive chipping product here as well. I did this by first spraying Alclad Duraluminum then the AK product, let it dry for a bit then I sprayed the DDG, let that dry and then dampened an old paint brush and scrubbed away the DDG. As such I am happy with the results.
The Shoulder straps in P-47's were an off white while the lap belts were a Khaki. I attempted to re-create this look with the Ultracast seat which is very nice I must say. I still had to give it a wash with some oil paints.
Fuselage and Wings
Initially I glued the wings together but in drying fitting it to the fuselage I saw that that the left wing root and wing joint were mis-matched, the wing root sat much higher than the wing. This was due to the mis alignment of the top wing tab and bottom wing tab. I created a shim to fix this which brought the top wing up higher and even with the wing root. The white stuff you see in the panel lines is Tamiya finishing polish. I used this stuff to polish the plastic in some areas as the kit had a lot of scratches on it.
Wings and Fuselage mounted and primed
I mounted the fuselage tot the wings then focused on prepping the surface by getting rid any visible, bumps, scratches, faults, etc I then primed the model with Tamiya surface primer (my favourite) and re-scribed the panel lines while removing any remaining scratches etc with various grits of micromesh cloths, 2000 to 10,000 grit I believe. When doing NMF finishes surface preparation is key as any little fault, scratch, seamline will show up especially when using the Alclad II paints.
One issue I discovered what that the bottom wing had two holes for the aircraft landing light. You have to chose which one to use. The instructions tell you to use the outer hole near the edge of the wing but in my research I discovered that this only applied to Block 28 aircraft and .beyond whereas previous aircraft such as mine had the light near the landing gear bay. Fortunately, I found that Hasegawa included a blanking disk to cover over the inappropriate hole which I was able to use. The instructions do not mention this at all.
Here's are some shots of the primed model.
The Engine: Pratt and Whitney R2800 double wasp Radial Engine
Next up was the engine. The P-47D-25 used the Pratt and Whitney R2800 Series 59 Engine. the biggest distinguishing feature of this engine were the Magnetos which were referred to as Turtleback Magnetos. The kit did not come with these but instead came with a set that frankly didn't resemble any type of P/W magnetos. Fortunately, a friend of mine sent me a spare set of Turtleback Magnetos which I was able to use.
I painted the engine with Alclad Duraluminum and the frewall Alclad Dull Aluminum. The reduction gear housing is suppose to be painted a dark blueish grey (not light grey you see on some restorations) so I mixed up my own colour for this and sprayed that on. I then hacked off the kit magnetos and added the Tamiya magentos to the magnetos housing which I then slid into the reduction gear housing. For the ignition wiring I used .3mm lead wire and as you can see some go to the back of the cylinders are kind of free floating in terms of their termination but this area won't be seen once the cowling in on so I not too worried about that. After getting everything connected up I gave it a wash of black oil paint non-thinned and let it sit for a while then used my oil thinner to wash the paint off. I then gave the reduction gear and magnetos a dry brush and touched up the ignition wires. Hasegawa included a Pratt and Whitney logo to go on the engine so I still need to add that and do some final touch up on the reduction gear bolts but she's more or less done.
Painting
The model was painted using Alclad II Aluminum with highlights of panels done with Alclad II Duraluminum. I masked off the areas to be highlighted first before spraying them. I had no issues with paint lift. One this was done I painted off the black band on the cowling and European theatre Black bands on the stabs and tail. I then carefully painted the invasion stripes on the wings and fuselage using Tamiya acrylics. This process was very time consuming but I took my time and everything came out okay.
Landing Gear
For the landing gear I scratch built a retraction bar and bracket and added these to each landing gear leg. These bars were used to pull in the wheels on take off in order to get the wheels to fit into the wheel bay.
Decaling
500 Lb General Purpose Bombs
Bombs completed. These are the kit bombs. I added the fuse wires and hand painted the yellow markers on the bombs as the kit dd not come with decals for this. Apparently these yellow band markers were't completely symmetrical on the real bombs and mine are not either. I was advised afterward that the fuse wires actually passed through the tail fin not over top as I have them. Oh well good to know for next time. I also weathered up the pylons with a oil wash.
For the bombs themselves I stippled the bombs with Tamiya surface primer to give them a rough texture.Then I painted them with a mixture of OD and Dark yellow. Finally I painted on the yellow markers and applied a green filter to fade the colour out a bit.
Final Touches and Completed Photos
To finish off the model I added a Flory models wash but left some in a few areas to dirty up the fuselage. I also added some Tamiya smoke in various areas again to give the aircraft a bit of weathered look. The clear bits (canopy, nav lights, landing light) were added, landing gear attached and bombs and finally the antenna wire and prop. The prop was painted in Gunze Mr. Hobby Color flat black and a dark blue grey for the prop housing. I used Tamiya Yellow for the prop tips and gave it a wash with light sandy filter. I didn't add chips to the prop as I had done on the cowling because the aircraft was fairly new at the time. The chips were added on the cowling band as this was a field paint job and was not as sturdy as paint used on the prop.
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