Curtiss P-40Q racer - Converted Pegasus 1/72nd kit + Draw Decals

 

(Photo SDASM photostream)

(The completed model is here:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2024/02/pegasus-172nd-curtiss-xp-40q-racer.html

I do support, wholeheartedly, the cottage industry. Not just in words, but buying and building and posting their creations. Hundreds of those cottage industry kits and products can be seen on this blog. I am willing, when needed, to go the extra mile, and do it gladly, as a modelling challenge, a way to learn and to hone those skills plus to support those brave manufacturers to do make an effort to provide a product that deserves to be built. But one thing is nice cottage, another a simple kit worth as a base, and another a crude and awful kit. And I don't support all of them. Of some, I stay away as far as I can. 

This is not a beginners' kit, by any stretch the imagination. It is in certain aspects coarse and lacks finesse and detail in some areas. It requires patience and a modeler willing to sort some visible shortcomings.

I have danced with ladies of questionable beauty, just for the pleasure of dancing. This blog has, along nice and pleasant builds, a number of them of the most despicable kits. Other modelers also build that kind of marginal kit, but they need time, patience and skill. The question is –at certain point- is the effort worth it?

You can see here many hundreds of kits, from the sublime to the basest, from the simple to the complex, from vacuformed to low and high pressure injected, to resin, to scratch, to even 3D-printed and photo-etched kits. Many a dragon has been tamed.

In very specific cases there is no option in the market other than a poor kit, so it’s that or nothing. For some, that’s their only raison d’être: that no other option exists. Maybe in some cases the same plane could be modeled by converting a better existing kit or simply scratchbuilding it. I have done both -many times- and find it in general faster and more rewarding than struggle with a frustrating kit. I decided that I better consign the really bad kits to oblivion, primordial material for the next eons’ oil reserves, to which the plastic may eventually revert. Dust to dust, oil-derivative to oil.

Now, these kits can be seen built on the Net (David Vincent has seen them!) and it means, as mentioned at the beginning, that they can be built, and in some cases to a nice result. 

I don’t shun, as some of you know, from a modeling challenge, which will be breaking the honor code of the Shaolin Modeling Monk and dishonoring the X-acto Samurai Bushido. This very blog attests to it. But the fact that you can do it doesn’t mean that you should do it, or even that you want to do it. 

I repeat: these lesser brands (see below in the next paragraphs) are built by modelers, it surely can be done -if you feel the unquenchable urge- but a price is paid in extra work and some (or a lot of, depending on your skill and commitment) frustration. Think of it as if you have a kit to fabricate a kit to build a model. Some time ago I decided I had enough of Merlin, old Dujin, Mach 2 or similar (after building them). But I still have a Pegasus Jenny in the stash, and have converted one of their kits to a very early passenger plane:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2023/01/junkers-cl1-j-10-civil-conversion.html

and another to a racer:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2020/11/ansaldo-brescia-racer-converted-pegasus.html

Here is the High Planes "Conquest 1" racer, an example of a very, very challenging kit:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2024/02/grumman-f8f-2-conquest-1-racer-high.html

And now, without further ado, we lift the curtain.

The Pegasus Curtiss P-40Q and the aftermarket decal set planned for it:

I know it's "short-run", still...:

White metal parts are part of the package, and unlike other kind of useless, too-soft metal parts, these are sturdy enough for the task:

They will need, as any single part of this kit, a careful cleaning and in the prop and spinner case, polishing to eliminate the grainy nature of the cast:

The instructions. Succinct, one could say, and as it is often the case not indicating precisely where things go. Your guess, modelers.

Transparency. Not bad clarity, a few scratches already from factory, a bit rough at the edges. It was already separated (more like yanked) from its sprue in a bad way, leaving a couple of nicks that will need repair. Hey, thanks for the extra work:

Full contents (I provided the sleeve for the canopy, as it came loose):

The usual deal: thick and somewhat intrusive sprue gates,

Sink areas are encountered on the parts, some relatively easy to fill and sand, some not:

More of the same:

And yet more. Maybe they have a dark covenant with the putty and sanding industries?

In some places is really difficult to tell what is part and what is crap:

Built-in anhedral. The kit lacks a way to setup the dihedral, and my attempts to flex the bottom half of the wing (in the photo below) started to show whitish stressed plastic. Why wasn't the dihedral molded as usual on the lower wing?:

The mouths of the air intakes are rendered as metal parts:

The problem is that in real life there was no septum in the middle, so it is removed:

After two days and many hours of cleaning and refining, it may still be needed to replace the wheels as they are incorrect for the racer, the joystick which is a bit pitiful, the headrest as it was different in the racer, and a couple other minor parts. I ordered an aftermarket photo-etched set to make up for the Spartan interior and the completely bare wheel wells. An accurate set of wheels in resin was ordered too. So you do the math: kit, plus decals, plus photo-etched set, plus resin wheels, all with its separate S&H:

Complete lack of well detail as said above, plus want to guess how the fit of the wing halves is? Exactly.

The plastic is soft enough to be amicable, and as mentioned the panel lines are fair, but the unavoidable filing and sanding given the rustic nature of the kit will mean some re-scribing.

Fair panel lines...but sadly a hastily made "radiator" that could have been better. A wire mesh will be epoxied over on the other -sanded flat- side and parts from a photo-etched set added:

Starting to deal with the sink holes, and the gun chutes -which need deletion for the racer:

The exhausts are drilled. In reality they were separated by a thin flange in twos:

More filling of the sinkholes:

The chutes are deleted:

I wanted to open the vents of the wing coolers. For that I followed the panel lines engraved in the kit... and ended up realizing that if you do that, trusting the manufacturer, you end up with one that is askew. Sigh...

Removing material from inside to reduce the thickness:

Working on restoring the symmetry of the vents:

A new joystick is made. Actual photos show a lever that was located to the right of it. I think it was the shift-stick for gear box (kidding, may be flaps) (friend and fellow modeler Mike reports that the lever was actually an hydraulic pump, thanks Mike!):

 The new headrest needed for the racer is made. In that guise -among other things- it predictably did away with the seat armor plate:

 Two little bars as coolers and the exhaust flaps:

The slot on the fuselage for the stab tongue is too shallow, and the tongue too thick anyway for it. They have have to be worked out a bit, but it's easily done:

The canopy needs some sanding fore and aft with a round peg or tube in order to fit neatly on the fuselage, because of the angle it was molded:

The little chunk that was missing in the frame is filled with putty to be later carefully sanded to contour masking the clear section of the front:

Here for your amusement are a few stills from an Internet reel on the National Air Races showing this very plane:

The P.E. set arrived. I will be using some of that:

The aftermarket photo-etched set (designed actually for the Special Hobby P-40) is used to provide some measure of detail to the otherwise very Spartan kit interior. As the cockpit opening is of medium size and the canopy is large and bubble style, it's better to make a little effort in the area:

After gluing the radiator front to one side, the fuselage is closed:

And if you did a fair job on dry fitting previously, the cockpit floor just easily drops in:

The prop is painted yellow and the tips masked to apply the semi-gloss black (the tips were yellow only at the front of the blades):

The right wheels arrived. The kit's are capped and uneven, whilst the racer had the spoke hub:

The wing halves are now glued together, after some persuasion:

Prop:

Plugging the holes in the wing and adding the roundish bits ahead of the LG bay:

Gluing wing to fuselage using the well known -and imprescindible in this case- "convincing"method precognized by the Catholic Inquisition:

The two models (the other is High Planes' "Conquest 1" racer) in progress. I feel more like a mason than a modeler, chiseling plastic away, grinding and polishing). Hours and hours invested, and yet so far from a good surface:

 First cat of primer. Much to do:

Clarity is restored to the canopy. Before gluing the canopy on, remember that the headrest was custom for the racer (it's shown above somewhere home-made) and that it didn't have the seat armor or gunsight:

White primer as a base for the yellow wings:

 Gloss white is now applied. A few ancillaries are painted yellow to test the hue. Wheels masked and painted rubber:

Yellow on the wings:

Yellow masked, black base for the metal hue on:

Once the fuselage is airbrushed with aluminium color, new masks are put in place to paint the tail control surfaces white aluminium, and the area surrounded the exhausts steel:

Now the exhausts and the cockpit coaming have to be painted, decals applied, and all the remaining parts (prop, canopy, landing gear, lg doors, etc.) added. Once the canopy is in place, the anti-glare panel on the nose can be painted.

One last masking:

On the way:

The instructions have the wing bottom decals reversed, easily spotted looking at online photos of this plane:

And almost there:

(The completed model is here:

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2024/02/pegasus-172nd-curtiss-xp-40q-racer.html