Scale aviation modeller international

seam down the centre of the bay

that has to be dealt with. My parts

apparently had a moulding defect

that resulted in the bay being too

narrow to fit in the lower fuselage

opening, so I added a wedge of

strip plastic to widen it to fit.

To assemble the centre fuselage

the cockpit was glued to the upper

section and the nose bay was

glued to the lower section. From

previous experience, I knew there

is interference between the aft end

of the nose bay and the cockpit

floor. In order to get the fuselage

parts to mate up, the aft end of

the gear bay and the floor need to

be thinned to near see-through

thickness. Even so, when I clamped

the parts together the gear bay

pushed the cockpit sides up above

the sill of the fuselage opening, so

I had to trim it flush and repaint.

I waited till after the fuselage

was assembled before cutting off

the P-38 nose. An important note

is that the instructions do not

show this correctly – use your

references and the camera nose part

to get the cut in the right place.

I know turned to the assembly of

the tail booms. These are made up

of two halves, into which the main

landing gear bay is inserted. On my

earlier build this fit was so bad that

I had to re-skin the bays’ interior

to fix all the steps and gaps. Armed

with this foreknowledge I proceeded

slowly with lots of trial fitting.

The part number callouts on

the instructions are incorrect or

missing totally, so I went by the

sprue diagram. When inserting

the bay into the boom I glued

along the lower edge and when

dry, inserted spacers into the

upper part to spread it as wide as

possible to minimize the large gaps

between the booms and the lower

wing. The kit bays are “handed”

so be sure to keep track of port and

starboard booms after assembly.

For some reason, the left boom

on these kits lines up better than the

right, so it was attached first using

tube glue and thick super glue. After

it was dry, I glued the horizontal

tail to the left boom so that I could

get a good vertical alignment of the

right boom, i.e. parallel to the left.

I had to cut off most of the boom-

to-wing fairing to get the correct

right boom alignment in vertical,

horizontal, and roll planes. Again,

copious amounts of glue were used.

The lower wing panels were

attached, after thinning the

trailing edges, and attention was

turned to the large gaps between

the booms and the lower wing.

Strip plastic was used on the right

side, and also to fill gaps in the

forward edges of the gear bays.

The engine nacelle parts were

then glued together and mated to the

booms. All the openings in the front

of the cowlings were opened up.

I now glued the camera nose

halves together and attached the

nose to the forward fuselage. The

lower side of the nose has three

camera windows, and on the kit, this

joint is a serrated arrangement with

the windows fitting into cutouts

on the mating part – very difficult

to glue smoothly and securely

without fogging the windows. I

only partially succeeded here.

P-38 models are notorious tail

sitters, so I filled the nose and

engine nacelles with weight.

Next there followed numerous

rounds of fill/sand/prime until

I was satisfied with the result.

This process erased most panel

lines, so these were re-scribed at

this time, although admittedly

I only concentrated on major

visible joints. The canopy was

masked with Bare-Metal foil.

The seat headrest prevented

the canopy from seating properly,

so it was filed down until the

canopy could be clamped in place.

PAINTING

The wheel wells were painted

interior green at this point and

masked in preparation for the

colour coat. Continued research

during the remainder of the build

convinced me that the wheels wells

and gear struts should be (neutral?)

grey, so after all painting and

weathering was completed, I re-

masked the wheel wells and landing

gear doors and painted them grey.

I originally wanted to do

“Shark” in the Haze scheme

but I had no idea what it looked

like in colour, and I never have

understood how painting white

over black results in blue! Since

I have plenty of OD/grey P-38s, I

opted for “Zola”, which I believe

is RAF PRU Blue based on colour

photos. Smarter folks than I say it

is Synthetic Haze, the Lockheed-

developed replacement for Haze,

“THE P-38 LIGHTNING WAS

THE USAAF’S FASTEST AND

HIGHEST-FLYING AIRCRAFT”

58 • NOVEMBER 2018 • SCALE AVIATION MODELLER INTERNATIONAL

KIT REVIEWS

056-65-Reviews-1118.indd 58 12/10/2018 15:58