Having built and really enjoyed the Airfix Mustang about 2 years ago and Eduard's Tempest about 12 months ago I was interested to see their new P-51 compared to Airfix's offering and if they'd learnt anything since the Tempest.
The Kit
- Eduard 1/48 North American P-51D-5 Mustang Chattanooga Choo Choo Boxing Kit No. 11134
Aftermarket
- Eduard Wheels - from the Royal Class Boxing
- Eduard Exhaust - from the Royal Class Boxing
The kit is extremely well detailed and generally goes together quite well. The cockpit is excellent from the box and the steel belts look great when installed.
I usually prefer decals over raised detail for instrument panels and that was the plan here but the instrument panel decal folded over and I couldn't untangle it so I went back to the PE, which is still good
A trick I picked up from a YouTube video was to stick some aluminium foil behind the coloured under wing lights.
The undercarriage bay is extremely well detailed.
Most of the assembly was straight forward and but I did find the fin fillet needed some sanding to fit.
Another annoying choice Eduard made, and where the Airfix kit's engineering is far superior, is the way the forward cowl is handled. Airfix supply the upper forward fuselage in one piece breaking along a panel line above the exhausts. Eduard go with the traditiona; full fuselage halves so you have clean up along that centre seam and then you have to restore the lovely detail. The Tempest has the same approach.
The worst bit of the kit fit wise however was the fit of the front windscreen over the glare shield. Like Airfix, Eduard moulded the windscreen including a piece of the fuselage to make things safer to glue.
But unlike Airfix , this just didn't fit. It fouled on the glare shield. Perhaps I had the glare shield in the wrong place, that said I'm not the first to experience this. However plenty of others report no issue so it's likely a build problem I introduced.
I had to scrape a fair bit away from the inside of the clear part to get the part to sit low enough and flush with the fuselage.
The gun inserts needed some finagling as well. I don't know why they went with inserts unless the wing could be used on a B/C variant in the future.
The undercarriage leg attachment is also a little suspect. I understand the reasoning, it is done so you get the right rake but it is not the greatest idea in terms of strength. I did manage a good join by cleaning out the paint and then letting it dry over night.
The Paint
- Tamiya AS-12 - Base coat and for the bare metal areas
- Alclad dark Aluminium - Aluminium Lacquer areas
- Mr Hobby H-52 Olive Drab - forward fuselage
- Mr Color C34 Blue - Tail and nose band
- Tamiya XF-2 White (with a drop of grey) - Stripes and Nose spinner
- Gaianotes German grey - For black
I made some masks to get the little gap around the national markings
Clear Coats
- Gaianotes Gloss
- Gaianotes Flat
The Decals
- Eduard Kit decals
The decals caused me no end of issues. To the point I stripped the entire model after it had been decaled and started again (luckily I had spare set of decals). I even stripped the upper wings a 2nd time after decaling due to stencil issues.
The national markings, codes, serials and nose art were excellent and responded well to the usual Mircroset and Sol.
But the small stencils were another matter - even though they were on the same sheet. They had large excess of carrier film and were prone to folding over. If the whole thing didn't fold the a edge would and this left a ridge that was difficult to ignore on a bare metal surface even with a couple of sealing gloss coats.
I used up a set from my Royal class boxing to finish this kit and didn't bother with stencils on the upper wings as I was over it by that stage.
I've ordered some Fundekal stencils for future projects as I don't like the Eduard ones.
The Wheels
Another annoyance I didn't discover until the end, is that the Eduard resin wheels are to big for the kit. You need to remove 1mm from the end of the undercarriage leg. I did manage to get them on and wasn't prepared to fix the legs after they were attached to the wings.
FFS surely Eduard you could make wheels the correct size to your own kit . IIRC the Tempest had similar wheel size issues.
The Weapons Pylons and Tanks
I chose the big paper tanks. These have lovely raised lines that you lose when you clean up the seams. I ended up scribing a line to simulate the detail that was there. They also fit poorly to pylons. I think fitting the tanks to the pylons prior to painting and then fitting that assembly to the aircraft at the end will be how I tackle this next time.
The sway braces for the pylons are tiny bits of photo etch, which while reasonably accurate are annoying to fit. I gave up trying to fold up the pads and glued a piece of styrene rod to simulate the jack screws.
Conclusions
First off, let me state whilst I like the Mustang I'm not a purest. For this subject build-abilty is big factor. So with that in mind here are my thoughts
The Eduard Mustang has the best detail, both cockpit, undercarriage and surface of the three 48 Scale mustangs I've built (Tamiya and Airfix are the other two). It is clearly superior to those.
But the Airfix kit has smarter engineering, particularly the cowl and is IMHO a much easier build over all. That said it's tanks are awful as are it's wheels.
The Airfix kit's decals are also better quality being printed by Cartograph (Although the choices in the Eduard kits are nicer) .
The fit issues in the Eduard kit I encountered have also been reported elsewhere so they aren't just me :-) . Others made the same mistakes I did so if you have some tips post them below.
If I didn't have the Royal boxing and I was going to build more Mustangs I'd choose the Airfix kit .
That said I'll certainly build more of the Eduard kits, especially in bare metal silver schemes as these really show off the lovely surface detail. I've got the Royal boxing so there are at least 2 more to come. Plus I expect the weekend boxings will be very well priced, perhaps even cheaper than the Airfix kit depending on where you live..
The Figure
- Ultracast USAAF fighter Pilot - Not much to say except that it is excellent.
The Photos
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