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Converting
Revell's P-40E to a long-tail F
by Brad Hagen |
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| As
a lot of you probably know the P-40 is my favorite warplane, I'm nut's
enough about it to do a website on it, P-40
Warhawk. It all started when I was just a little tyke reading
about the Flying Tigers which really fired up my imagination and my life
long love for the P-40. With Scratchbuilders demise, we're only left with
two P-40 choices in 1/32nd scale, Craftworks P-40B/C and Revell's P-40E which I'm using for this conversion. Which P-40 to build? |
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| I bought a set of Micro Scale decals (sheet #32-10) from Glen (the Rotorhead) Senkowski off of ebay. The decals are for a P-40F of the 86th F.S., 79th F.G. which has the desert camouflage scheme of OD and Stone over Light Grey. My three favorite P-40 groups are the Flying Tigers; the 325th FG, the Checkertails; and the 49th FG, so why did I choose this one? I loved the tail art and 44 is my favorite number…I'll have to do Lighthouse Louie sometime, it's a Checkertail and #44 :c) | |
 Nose art |
 Tail art |
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decals are really great, but the drawings are incorrect as they show it
as being a short-tail F when in fact the real plane was a long-tail F,
Dan LoRusso sent me photographic proof of it and gave me the opportunity
to do even more surgery on my P-40, thanks Dan!! :c) I already had a P-40 kit, not wanting to go nuts on scratchbuilding, I ordered Jerry Rutman's P-40 detail set, worth the money in time saved. To see what the finished model will look like, Dan LoRusso's P-40F with the same set of decals, but different side numbers and tail art can be seen in our gallery. I'm using Claus Gustafsen's article on his conversion of Revell's P-40E to an F to guide me through this. Time to start cutting In converting a P-40E to an F, there are two two major areas that need to be changed, the tail and nose. |
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| These drawings show the difference in the tail, the fin and rudder were moved back 2 feet 2 inches on the real P-40 making 13/16 of an inch in 1/32nd. | |
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These drawings show the difference in the nose. The F used a Merlin engine so the top scoop needs to be removed. The chin scoop needs to be moved forward almost to the spinner, and the cowl flaps need to be moved forward about the width of the flap, the middle of the bottom is filled solid. Not shown in the drawings is the inside of the chin scoop, the E had 3 intakes, the F had only one and the characteristic "splitter bar" was removed. A square radiator needs to be scratchbuilt with a single round air intake below that. |
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| This is the fuselage right out of the box. | |
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| This
is after the front and rear of the cowl have been cut off, and the fin
and 1/8th inch of the rear fuselage were cut off in a right angle so a
plug can be inserted.
Since I'm leaving the side panels off the nose to be able to reach the inside while rebuilding the nose, I'm not going to remove the top scoop until later as it would leave almost no plastic on the top of the nose. Once the sides are glued together, I'll cut it off and fill it in. |
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| I glued some .005 plastic tabs on the nose to give support for gluing the cowl back on. The plastic is thin enough to conform to the shape of the nose…that and when I opened my .010 bag, I found out it was clear instead of white, so was the other bag of .010 I ordered…grrr, next time I'll look at my order closer!! | |
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| I
glued the cowl on and in retrospect, I'd leave the strip off of the back
of the cowl, adding it on after the cowl's glued back on, it got in the
way more than it helped, I ended up hacking away on it and will have to
replace it. When I first tacked the cowl on with liquid glue, my heart
sank, there was a big gap at the front of the cowl. I didn't want to add
a chunk of plastic and sand it to shape since that area is very visible
on the P-40F, so I glued it on as close as I could get it.
Through trial and error, I found that by pressing the bristles of my old Testors paint brush I use for gluing down on the building board until the bristles spread wide, then dipping it in the glue, it will really load up the brush with glue. I then touched it to the large gap in the nose and soaked it good with glue. When the plastic had softened I pushed the parts together and down on the gap, it shaped itself just like I wanted it to. No need for putty, just a light sanding on the outside and inside. I taped the fuselage sides together for gluing on the other cowl so they matched up, I'll fill in the gap after the fuselage sides are glued together. |
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| More to come someday….. | |
| © Brad Hagen 2002 | |
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