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Rebublic P-47
D-40 "Thunderbolt" by Chris "The Ripper" Novak Kidding first: after beeing on an model-expo at the end of June in Frankfurt displaying a few of my cutaways including the whole "Sachsenberg-Schwarm, 3 Silver Jugs and the Seafire FR 47 some of my modelling comrades ( and also some visitors! ) declared me to be a kind of mad, insane ( and something more) because of showing a planes construction, technic and interior by scratchbuilding this cutaways. After the second day my clubmate Michael Ullmann, a very great modeller and book-author himself, gave me the nickname "The Ripper" because of that.....ok, a bit funny but I think I like it......as long as the men with the white suit don´t try to catch me! But to be serious: this is the next one of my "Silver-Bubbletop-Jug" project showing one more absolutely beautyful P-47D because of it´s colourful nose-art and the yellow stripes. Again, it´s an actual (?) REVELL kit, but this time I once more tried to raise the level of detail and accuracy by trying some new techniques. Some of you may have followed the online build in LSP` s "works" forum and as promised I´ll do a detailed three part article how to handle those old REVELL kits to make them look right beside all those new tooled "Doras" and "one-o-nines".
This time , after using bare-metal foil on the two jugs before only partially on some flat panels over a coat of different silver colours I decided to do a complete foil-job on this bird. Because of the practising with the Jugs before, on this one the foil job worked very good and I´m very satisfied with the result. After trying some colours and metalizers I´m finally sure: for a NMF nothing looks better than a completely "foiled" bird, although the foils I used ( Bare-metal chrome and aluminium) were coated with semi gloss after decaling and finally waxed with my special furniture wax the foils give a very natural and real shine and gloss. By the way: thanx a lot to Jay Kim from HOBBYDECAL for a test sheet of his great dry- transfer stencils! Although I did not use all of his stencils because the other plane markings are a mix of water-slide decals from the kit and selfmade ( and partially handpainted) markings - for example nose art, therefore I had to give her final the coat of semigloss - the dry transfers worked very good and the quality is absolutely perfect. Highly recommended, you can read some reviews of the great HOBBYDECAL stuff here in LSP.
The major modifications - which will also be described in the detailed article- are: All service panels are made from aluminium and applied with what I call "hot-metal-technique",landing gear made from aluminium tubings, landing flaps made from aluminium-sheet, panel lines rescribed, cockpit scratched, wheels ( including spoked-covers) and prop from Jerry Rutman, inner gear-bay doors modified, fuselage and underwing ETC modified / added, some vents and drains on fuselage underside added, covers of ailerons ( visible on wings underside) added, prop and lights are working. After beeing a little bit in a hurry by trying to get this bird finished right in time for the model show in Frankfurt ( finished her only 3 days before!) it was a absolutely great surprise to me to get the first price at the contest there in the planes category! Again, I would like tho thank LSP to give me the possibility for the online- build and especially all the great guys there who shared this build with me and helped with comments, infos and some pics. LSP rulez!
© Chris Novak 2004 |
