SPA Modeler

Looks good John!

Great looking stuff!

Excellent work!

Incredible....

Thanks guys! Since the bottom can be segmented into discrete areas because of the hard-edged invasion stripes, I'm going to lay those stripes down first on the wings. I mask off the white areas first. Don't really care about overspray because the neutral grey is going to cover it.


I already pre-determined the width of the stripes when I painted the flaps and ailerons so I use those same dimensions on the wings.



After the invasion stripes, I'm going to paint the outboard wing bottoms neutral grey. I'm using the same pattern I established on the gear covers by using the darker Mr Hobby Aqueous version of Neutral Grey as a base and then lighten by using the lighter AK Real Color version as post-shade.



Attaching the ailerons and flaps to make sure the stripes match.



As someone pointed out, this particular P-47D has a vent arrangement on the port side of the windscreen. I'm going to depict it as a thin fram
e.



The prop blades have very light chipping on the edges.

Here's the prop with the stencil decals and flat coat applied. Very light chipping on the leading edges of the prop blades.



After the invasion stripes, I painted the extra large US insignias on the wing bottoms. Most 78th FG Thunderbolts had insignias under both wings. I decided to do the blue color first to avoid any white sneaking through the edges, which happens sometimes when you paint the white first. I was going to mix my own shade of blue but when I shuffled through my paint inventory, I found a Mr Hobby Aqueous Blue FS15044 that was a great match for the blue on the Barracuda decal sheet.


After the blue dries, the rest of the mask is carefully placed within the mask outline on the wing. Temporary tape is used to keep the mask together.


The white areas of the mask are then weeded out. Tape and Micro Mask is used to seal the joint between the outer and inner masks.


White is then sprayed.


It's always fun to see the results as you peel off the mask!


No mishaps on the starboard wing bottom. There is a tiny bit of paint lift on the invasion stripe but that should be super easy to fix.


A very small paint lift on the port wing star... again, easy to correct.


The wing bottoms are painted. The next step will be to paint the fuselage bottom and the undersides of the horizontal stabs. And then I'll start painting the top side.

Incredible work. Very inspirational.

I quit... ROFL!

The wing undersides look fabulous!