I've just today finished the Revell 1/48 North American P-51D Mustang "Blondie". Overall the kit was a pretty good one to make up, the fit of the parts was, to be honest, excellent, there was little filing or sanding that needed doing to the kit to make it fit well. The option of opening up the wing panels to reveal the Browning .50s underneath worked pretty well for me, although I didn't like the access panel on the engine. The engine itself underneath wasn't particularly detailed and there was no realistic way of fixing the panel in a kind of semi-open position so I glued it shut after bodging the paint job on the engine anyway (Partly because the detailing was more than a little indifferent). As with any kit there were some small niggles. The pilot's pose made it look like he was having a bit too much fun for a man on his own. :lol: The propellor and the wheels on the two main undercarriage legs are supposed to be secured in place by pushing a heated screwdriver over the plastic protrusions! I mean really, in a kit that they've gone to such effort over that just seems cheap, almost like it had come to a week or two before production, they hadn't properly designed it and just decided on this as a "Make do" measure. How much effort would it have taken to cut the undercart legs to the proper size and make a ring for the prop? :evil: I personally would have preferred the option of positioning the tail gear up or down, you have that option with the main gear but the tail gear has its doors molded open on the fuselage, a minor point really and one that I'm sure any modeller who was particularly bothered about it coudl ammend. Last but not least, two of the decal numbers on the US 8th AAF scheme are wrong. I only discovered these myself because I was curious about what they actually said and was looking at the decals through a magnifying glass before I applied them. The first one I spotted said "Step here" which I might not have spotted except that it's supposed to go on the underside of the engine cowling. If you buy this kit yourself on the underside of the US paint scheme decals no.18 and 26 should read 23 and 27 respectively. Aside from that the only other gripe I could have is the decals themselves. Revell seemed to have covered everything with these, they are just so detailed (Seriously, each side of the Mustang has about 20 decals to it!), that it took me a good 3 days to finish the decals. Overall a very good kit, if I was asked for a score I'd probably give about an 8.5 / 10. I was very pleased with the kit, not perfect but then how many are ? Pictures to follow.
