classic muck-up. On most aircraft,
the wheel hub faces into the bay, but
not the P-51, where the hub faces
outboard. This is shown clearly on
the instructions. But as I am real
modeller, who reads instructions?
So, I had firmly attached
my undercarriage the wrong
way around, and when trying
to gently remove it, I managed
to break the locating stub
off on one leg in its locating
socket, and the air went blue.
Out came my second kit, which
donated its undercarriage to the
cause (I am sure Scale Aircraft
Conversions will have a white metal
replacement set out by the time you
read this). I now faced the tricky
task of drilling out the broken
stub, using a square jewellers
file to reinstate the original
square shaped locating socket.
While I had the drills out, I also
drilled out the machine guns,
exhaust pipes, and the ends ofthe bazooka tubes. This required
a steady hand but really improves
the look of the completed model.
Finally, the rear canopy was
added, the masks removed from
the windshield, and an aerial
wire added from Knitting In
Elastic to finish my build.CONCLUSION
This is a beautiful kit that is accurate
out of the box, and comes with
so many optional parts that you
can fully use any
aftermarket sets
you may have for a
Mustang with the tail
fillet. The fit is superb,and even with my own self-induced
mistakes, it only took a week to build.
I am sure we will see at least
two more variations on a theme
before the year is out and it certainly
deserves to be a best seller: Airfix’s
large distribution network in the UK
makes the kit easily available to many
without resorting to the internet.
In fact, the kit is so good I
have laid down a third example
for my retirement stash.
My thanks to Airfix for supplying
the sample used in my build andto my wallet for supplying the
second kit that I used to correct my
mistakes. Next time I WILL read the
instructions before applying glue!38 • JANUARY 2018 • SCALE AVIATION MODELLER INTERNATIONAL
036-41-QB-Mustang-0118.indd 38 08/12/2017 17:01