1/32 Revell P-38J-10 Lightning

Gallery Article by Steve Negley on Aug 10 2009

 

I've had this kit sitting in a box for quite some years now. I could have gotten one of those more expensive Trumpeter kits. I just decided to tackle this one. I started by sanding off all the rivet detail then started fitting all the big parts and flying surfaces. I've built this kit many times before and I've found that it will go together pretty decently if the time is taken to make things fit. Basically everything fits to the wing. Not a bad piece of model engineering really. The rough spots are where the fuselage and the booms mate to the wing and the canopy will take some work to get it to fit right

There are some nice things out there for the P-38 in this scale now to detail it up. Some things I bought, some things I scratch-built. I purchased the Waldron Detail set for the cockpit and a True Details resin weighted wheel set. Before assembling the booms I scratch-built some radiators and beefed up the oil coolers with some brass screen. The Waldron detail set requires a lot of making your own boxes, wheels, etc but the placards make a realistic interior. Only the seat and the floorboard were used from the kit. All the seat detail and floorboard detail was sanded off and the pieces re-worked with my own scratch-built details. The instrument panel was scratch-built. After getting the cockpit all detailed it was time to put the rest together. I never thought about exposing the gun detail, you need all that room for weight to keep the nose wheel on the ground.

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I actually got the model to fit together pretty well. All that fitting would save me a lot of time sanding. Most of the sanding would involve the "rough spots" mentioned before but those sanded out with little effort. A generous coat of primer was sprayed and then I started to do the finish sanding. When this was complete it was time to start scribing the panel lines. I think if you're going to build this Revell kit, the panel line exercise is a must, it changed the whole appearance of the model in my opinion.

I chose to finish the model in a natural metal finish and in the markings of Maj. Thomas B. McGuire, 2nd highest scoring American ace of all wars and awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. The NMF is Alclad Duraluminum and Floquil Old Silver. Thanks to ARC member "P-38johnny" who helped me with the decals. Even with all the extra work I put into this kit I think it's testimony that these old Revell kits can match up to the newer offerings in some cases.

This model was entered in the Region 10 IPMS held in Colorado Springs, June 09. Third Place Large Scale Aircraft Prop Division.

Steve Negley

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Photos and text © by Steve Negley