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P38 Lightning model plane built in 1/72nd scale page two
Before attaching the P-38 fuselage booms to the wing the tail plane was glue in place. This whole assembly lines up a very well in this example of the P-38 kit, a fine piece of Airfix craftsmanship.
Lower outer wing panels and the outer tail surfaces were then glued in place finishing the basic Lightning airframe. Very little use of filler is required to this assembled airframe, just the odd spot here and there to tidy things up.
For modelling the Lightning with lowered undercarriage very useful one piece door mouldings are provided in the Airfix kit. These glue into the booms and provide attachment points for the gear. At this point most of the sundry small details were left off the model so the main paint spraying job could be carried out with less problems.
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Minor filling was done and then the entire model aircraft sprayed with light grey enamel paint as a primer (after suitably masking the necessary areas of the plane).
The aircraft was then ready for the top coat paint, olive drab upper sides and dark sea grey underneath. But wait a minute, what's this? RAF dark sea grey for the underneath of an USAAF P-38 Lightning operating in WW2, you must be kidding me. Looking at plenty of photographs convinced me that this choice of colour just didn't add up. Nothing for it but to do some home brewing for the paint work. I mixed together sea grey, white and light grey in amounts I cannot remember (scientific as always!) to give what I reckon is a closer approximation to the grey underside of the P-38 Lightning modeled. Testing some on the model convinced me I had made a good choice.
This was duly sprayed on with the airbrush, three coats did the job to my satisfaction.
Next up was the upper olive drab paintwork. On opening the tinlet of Humbrol matt 66 and mixing it's contents thoughts of displeasure crossed my brain. Once again this colour does not look like the upper paintwork of a Lightning.
I brushed a small patch of this colour onto the wing to see if my doubts were right, and after drying indeed they were.
No problem just do what I did for the underside. I mixed some olive drab, insignia yellow and grass green together until satisfied I had a suitable colour. This was tested on a small patch to see what it dried like and then sprayed on the model.
After drying I was a happy man.
Of course I could be colour blind and to everyone else it looks way off but I don't care as it looks right to my eyes an I'm the one enjoying it!
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Next a coat of satin varnish was applied to the model and the decals stuck down. These went on with no problems, but I painted the red and white fin markings on as this was the easy way. When dry a further spray of satin varnish was applied to seal in the transfers, this gives a slightly too shiny appearance which will be dealt with later.
Next job adding the detail parts that I had left off the model, cannon, undercarriage etc. I prepainted these small parts on the sprue.
The cannons are very small parts, I managed to ping a couple off the bench while cutting them from the sprue - (just like being in the Bermuda triangle these vanished never to be seen again). I had to make a couple of replacements from stretched sprue.
The canopy is a very nice moulding which fits well, this was masked with Maskol and sprayed with more of my concockted olive drab colour before being attached with PVA.
The entire model was sprayed sparingly with some matt varnish until I was happy with the final finish (with the canopy masked off). That about did it, one finished model of a favourite aircraft of mine to go into the cabinet, the P-38 Lightning.
P-38 Lightning kit Airfix part one
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