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1/48 Bronco P-40


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After my long, tedious job foiling the MiG 21, I decided it was time to tackle something completely different. I've never built a kit from Bronco before, but this P-40 subject inrigued me. It includes options for Canadian decals, with a dark grey/green camo.

Since I don't have an ability to airbrush here in our rented condo, I wanted to see how a hand-painted camouflage job might look. 1/48 scale is perfect for that, since it's easier to hide imperfections in a paint job than on a 1/32 WW II aircraft.

I also decided to do the grey/green camo, because I also have an Academy 1/48 Tomohawk IIb (same aircraft, essentially) to build, and it looks nicely suited for a North African scheme.

 

This thread will take longer to create, because unlike my MiG, I have only just started this build.

ALF

 

 

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This kit looks really nice to me, but my standards are a bit low. It has really good surface detail, and from the early part of the build I think it's well engineered. Case in point is the rectangular box for the main wheel well. In some other kits I've built, with a similar structure, the parts kind of fit together end to end, with little clear guidance on how exactly they should fit together. 

In this kit, parts C6 and C9 fit beautifully into little slots and holes in C8 and C3. The completed structure is on the page.

 

In the second pic, you can see the equivalent of C3 for the other wheel well, and how it has a slot and a hole to perfectly locate the side part.

 

The next 3 pics show some of the quality of detail on the sprues. This should be a fun little build.

 

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Just so you know, I didn't glue the little wheel well boxes to the lower wing part. Instead, I glued them into the upper wings, because the upper wings have little locating holes for the pins on the boxes, and I wanted to make sure they matched up. The lower wing section doesn't have much in terms of guidance for placement of these boxes.

 

Out of curiosity, I looked up a build review, and found this one. Oddly, it appears the cockpit floor is not deep enough on this (and other P-40) kits. 

https://www.scalespot.com/onthebench/p40bronco/build.htm

More soon.

ALF

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Edited by ALF18
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The Cockpit issue is generally driven by the same thing across all kits with that issue, which is clearance between the wing and pit.

On the real thing, the cockpit floor is actually the upper wing surface (same on Allison Mustangs BTW, but not on Merlin Mustangs which have the wing lowered 4")

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20 hours ago, mawz said:

The Cockpit issue is generally driven by the same thing across all kits with that issue, which is clearance between the wing and pit.

On the real thing, the cockpit floor is actually the upper wing surface (same on Allison Mustangs BTW, but not on Merlin Mustangs which have the wing lowered 4")

Good to know. I've read that the pilot sits up quite high in the P-40 cockpit (window sill arriving at about elbow level, I think). Is the same thing true in the Allison Mustangs?

I've sat in the Hurricane at the flying museum in Gatineau. I could barely see out the sides, because the seating position is super low. Being used to sitting in fighters like the CF-18 and F-16, I feel far more comfortable when I am very high up and the sidewalls are lower.

ALF

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I deviated from the instructions by gluing the two gear well boxes into the upper wing sections, but I found the guns had nice rectangular locating slots in the lower wing as shown.

Next, the split flaps. At first I was impressed by how this kit allowed for drooped flaps, and the interior detail (let's not talk about the injection marks right now) was nice.

Then, I did a bunch of googling to see what angle the flaps would typically lie at when parked. After about an hour, I found that the vast majority (in fact maybe all) of the photos I found with drooped flaps were of models, not of the real thing. The operating manuals I found on line did talk about how the flap system worked, but didn't give any angles or images of the flap position indicator.

I made a 'command decision' to position the flaps retracted (up). Turns out that the drooped option then made the fit a little problematic, depending on construction order.

I chose to glue the split portion of the flaps into the upper wing sections, but may not have located them exactly right. This led to a little bit of fit, trim, fit, until the wings would meld nicely together. In retrospect, I probably should have glued the lower flap portions into the lower wing sections, then glued the wings together. Duh.

 

After I got the wings together, it was time for the forward portion of the wheel wells. The kit has nice little nubs that project forward from the wells, and they fit nicely. They even supplied little bits of PE for the detail inside the little channels. That was a bit interesting. The part numbers were P2, but I couldn't find the 'P' sprue. Hmm. Must be PE, but I didn't see any PE in the box.

Sure enough, in the front of the instructions, I found that there was indeed PE. Where, though? I had already looked inside the decal pouch, where the resin standing pilot was, but hadn't seen any PE. Now, convinced that it existed, I looked closer, and found that the PE was in a little plastic pouch tucked between the protective film and the decal sheet.

 

The PE itself is protected by plastic film on both sides. Very nice packaging. BTW, I am very impressed with the instructions. Glossy paper. Colours. Better than many kits I've built.

 

Speaking of instructions, there is one very odd thing. They call for, in step 5, the assembly and installation of the landing gear. At this point I haven't even built the fuselage, let alone mated the wing to the fuselage! Talk about strange! More soon.

ALF

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Got the wings glued together, and the PE installed in the main wheel wells. Lovely surface detail. Don't look too closely at the flaps - you'll notice that my mistake in the build order has led to some botched surgery on the right flap (left side of pic). Oh well, it won't show underneath.

 

I used a very lazy method to do the main instrument panel. The kit uses the strange part with a bunch of stuck-together circles, topped with a fairly blank MIP with circular holes to see through to the other part. There is very little to represent instruments. So, I went to my unused PE from my latest MiG 21 build, and chopped out some of part PE 19 to use on the P-40. (Disclaimer: this is in no way an attempt to show how early Soviet jets were quite rudimentary in that their MIPs looked a bit like WW II prop MIPs... lol)

 

I glued the MIP (chopped a bit) onto the kit parts. Very little work, and in the tiny, dark, cockpit, good enough.

 

For the cockpit, gear wells, and other interior green areas, I used XF-71 Cockpit Green.

 

After the green dried, I used a silver metallic artist's pen to highlight some buttons, rivets, etc, and also some bits that would be yellow. Over top of the green, I used this Bic Mark-it pen (orange), and coloured the head pad and map case. Made for a convincing leather colour when applied directly onto the green.

 

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Here's the almost-finished cockpit. Those injector extrusions have to go, otherwise it doesn't fit into the fuselage. The MiG MIP looks strangely at home...

 

For all its fine detail, I don't like the way the sprue attachment points are on this kit. At the rear of the rudder, where the kit plastic is super thin, there is a huge block to be chopped off. I had to use some care to make sure I didn't chip out the rudder while I was at it.

 

Enough complaining. The cockpit fits into some locator pins nicely. Dry fitting confirmed the headrest portion fits nicely into the aft fuselage. Here it's obvious why everyone complains about the shallowness of the cockpit floor. As was pointed out by one of our resident experts on the type, the cockpit floor is supposed to be on the wing upper surface. What surface would be where the wing shape is well below the cockpit here. At scale, that probably equates to about from the knee joint down on a pilot.

 

The tailwheel is strangely complex. I'm used to, on 1/48 kits, a simple hole that the strut plugs into, or similarly uncomplicated arrangement. This kit appears to be attempting to copy the actual aircraft's strut, with an oval fuselage former, a long, fragile, strut, and a horizontal part that the strut locates into (at top left). Way too complex for me! Nobody is going to be allowed to look inside my wheel wells, unless she is wearing a low-cut blouse... 

 

 

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I got the fuselage glued together. The rear portion came together quite nicely, with little to no filler required. Here you can see I've not glued the front portion (under the engine) yet. Note how the fuselage to upper wing joint is not too bad...

 

Unfortunately, when I squeeze the forward fuselage together, you can see a large gap at the upper wing joints. I will try to bend the wings up (with pronounced dihedral) when gluing to minimize it, but filler will likely be required.

 

I mentioned earlier that the instructions are nicely coloured here and there to show what colours to paint things. Where it becomes a bit problematic is when things are black. Part A48, for example, is the plastic just below the green x6 in the centre of the photo. Even with much squinting, I'm not 100% sure which way is forward on that part. I finally figured that I would use part A25 to glue to parts A42 and A43 to make the two exhaust manifolds you see at left. Note also that the exhaust stacks are parts A 47, times 6!!! Very finicky with tiny parts, which all must be aligned precisely. I don't know why they made the kit this way - perhaps to preserve detail on each exhaust?

 

I am not one to care about showing off engines. Most builds I do will never have exposed engines, because frankly I find aircraft engines boring (opinions expressed do not represent politically-correct care for all trades who work on aircraft, even though they are very critical to proper operation of the machines).

I therefore tried to see if I could simply seat the exhaust assemblies into the fuselage's engine side panels. In this picture, you can see those parts are E1 and E3. I dutifully went hunting for them on my sprues. 

Hmm. Sprue A, B, C, D... dang! No sprue E. I did a square search of my entire workspace, and the floor, and even accused the dog of devouring sprue E (he insisted he didn't eat plastic, but I suspect he's the reason I lose small bits sometimes). How could I lose an entire sprue????

 

Finally, I found it - turns out sprue E is the clear plastic sprue. The idea, of course, is that the builder can glue the clear panels in place and display the nicely-detailed engine. Phew. Thought I'd lost a whole sprue there. Soon, I'll be dry-fitting the lot to see if I can leave out a lot of engine detail, and use the engine to hold the prop and exhausts in place - I plan to paint over the panels with camouflage anyway.

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After consulting with my trusted expert (AX_365), I decided to go with gluing the fuselage to the upper wings, letting it set, then forcing the lower front fuselage together. It appears to be okay that way - but we'll see when it comes to installing the engine and its cowlings.

 

Second photo shows how the seams are. Not bad.

 

Now, for those pesky exhaust nozzles. I complained earlier about how the dark coloured drawings in the instructions were very hard to decipher, and that the orientation of the part that goes atop the exhaust manifolds was not easy to figure out. Well, when you look under that part, the locating pins are nicely shaped to make it only go one way. Duh.

 

Not wanting to work too hard on the exhaust nozzles for now, I decided to tackle the radiators underneath. Partially assembled here.

 

Look how tiny those little cylinders are! At least my thumb isn't in need of too much trimming... 🙂

 

The finished assembly. I didn't bother cleaning up the outsides of the little pipes, since they'll be hidden.

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The bottom of the engine comes with little locators for the radiator part, so I glued that in place.

 

Sorry for the fuzzy pic. This is what the engine assembly looks like with one exhaust nozzle installed.

 

A little dry fitting of the cowling. The exhaust stack projects all right. Interesting how the lower front of the radiator assembly makes the front lip of the lower fuselage. The cowling fits nicely onto it.

 

6 exhaust stacks installed on one side. I kept looking at them from different angles to make sure they were all in approximate alignment. Here's where I complain about the kit. For a casual builder, there is absolutely no need to have so many tiny pieces to make up the exhaust. The potential for misalignment is enormous, and it's a royal pain to situate each one. I only dropped one of the 12, and luckily found it quickly before the dog decided to suck it up and see if it was edible.

 

Prop assembly, then the engine with its exhausts, and finally in the background you can see the firewall glued in place. I didn't bother to install all the stuff on the firewall, and left out all kinds of detail in the engine area. For those who like that sort of stuff (like the guy building the awesome 1/32 Mustang in this forum), it's a pretty nice kit. For me, I spend my time figuring out what I can safely omit and still have the engine hold the prop and exhaust stacks in the right places.

 

Another view of the firewall with the side brace engine mounts. I angled them slightly inward, so I can spread them and have them sit tightly against part of the engine to hold it securely in place. I don't care where the engine attaches, just that I have a surface to glue to.

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Looking good pal.  Glad the recommendation worked out.  Looks like it might need just a touch of filler at the front of the wing / fuselage join but it could be the lighting too.  The exhaust stacks on the Mustang are the same.  Individual stacks per cylinder with shrouded or unshrouded manifolds.  The one I'm building has the shrouded manifold and at least I can install the stacks after painting and assembly.  In our cases, they're making us work harder, not smarter.  Are you going to paint the clear panels or leave them transparent?

 

Look forward to the next update.

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5 minutes ago, AX 365 said:

Looking good pal.  Glad the recommendation worked out.  Looks like it might need just a touch of filler at the front of the wing / fuselage join but it could be the lighting too.  The exhaust stacks on the Mustang are the same.  Individual stacks per cylinder with shrouded or unshrouded manifolds.  The one I'm building has the shrouded manifold and at least I can install the stacks after painting and assembly.  In our cases, they're making us work harder, not smarter.  Are you going to paint the clear panels or leave them transparent?

 

Look forward to the next update.

Thanks Mike! Yes, there may be a bit of filler to add. I definitely will NOT be keeping the panels transparent. I am not crazy about piston engine painting and detailing - I just want to have the machine buttoned up.

In a way it's a shame all that detail will go to waste, but it's not my biggest concern.

ALF

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  • 2 weeks later...

I took my time with the nose area. There are lots of parts that need to be solidly in place, so I allowed for drying in between. I installed the left engine cover first, then dry-fit the round piece at the front. Looked ok.

 

Here the round piece is glued in place.

Only small gaps here and there, with the top cover in place. I chose not to display the guns either. The kit has great detail, but I want this to be a quick build for a 3-footer.

 

I found that brush painting with a large, soft brush was not bad. For the bottom I used Italeri acrylic paint Flat Azure Blue 4308AP, which it says is FS 35231. Compared to the blue in the instructions, it looks a bit too azure, but it is a beautiful, rich blue.

Note also the tailwheel structure. I had left an extra moulding bit in place. In this picture, you can see why it looks a bit like the nub that the tailwheel attaches to, but closer inspection of the instructions revealed that it was not what it appeared to be, so I chopped it off after this pic.

 

Tailwheel installed. I didn't spend a lot of time filling the gap on the bottom lower fuselage, nor the flaps.

 

Gloss coat (Future wax) applied with a brush. In this scale, hand-painted camo doesn't look too bad.

ALF

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Got it done. Not a showcase model, but one that proves to me that I can brush-paint camo on a 1/48 WWII prop and make it look okay. This opens up more possibilities to me in this hobby while we are living in a rental condo that I can't spray in using the airbrush.

It now joins my others in that category (both the P-47 and Stuka were airbrushed in our previous house).

Thanks for following along.

ALF

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5 minutes ago, Emvar said:

Hey Brother! Nice work.

Thanks, Elmo! Long time no hear. Been off Facebook for over a year now, so kind of missing you and other good friends. Got any builds on ARC lately?

ALF

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On 2/6/2022 at 4:02 PM, ALF18 said:

Thanks, Elmo! Long time no hear. Been off Facebook for over a year now, so kind of missing you and other good friends. Got any builds on ARC lately?

ALF

No been a weird 2 years...... I often think about you all, and how you are doing! Still up to my usaul shenanigans..... but keep the politics and religion at bay........ religion being the F-35.

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On 2/7/2022 at 9:21 AM, AX 365 said:

That turned out quite nicely, sire.  Well done.

Thanks Mike!

On 2/7/2022 at 1:01 PM, kurnass77 said:

Nice job my friend!

 

Gianni

Grazie! (Hope I got that right)

14 hours ago, Emvar said:

No been a weird 2 years...... I often think about you all, and how you are doing! Still up to my usaul shenanigans..... but keep the politics and religion at bay........ religion being the F-35.

You've just alluded to a big reason I'm off Facebook. Too much crap on there. Hope to see you in YYZ one day!

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