Hasegawa

P-40 Warhawk Eggplane

Kit Number: 60119 (TH9)

Reviewed by  John R. Lee, IPMS# 11172

MSRP: $8.95 Kit supplied by Dragon Models USA: www.dragonmodelsusa.com The kit comes in a sturdy top opening box - great for holding the parts as you work on the model. There are twenty-four Olive plastic parts and a two part crystal clear canopy and windscreen for the P-40 and a colorful decal sheet with two schemes. The Scheme for Col. Scott is missing the Aircraft #7 that is quite prominent on the real aircraft. I made one from a 'Z' off of a Micro Scale P-47 decal sheet. On the RAF scheme the under side color calls for a mix of three different colors #34, #20, & #31. Color #31 is missing from the paints used list. As I took the easier O.D. over Neutral Gray aircraft it didn't matter to me, but #31 is Dark Gray (1) according to the charts I have. Now let's get on with the build. I used Tamiya's extra thin glue that causes the plastic to melt and will fill small seams/gaps in the plastic parts. When I glued the fuselage halves together there was a very rough surface where the instrument decal was to go. I covered it with a piece of Evergreen .005 sheet and later painted it Grey so the instrument decal would show up better. I cut off the lower left and right instruments and later placed them to the left and right of the top two. To get them all on the panel I had to lower them a bit. All in all it looks ok (to me at least). Next are the horizontal tails and wings. I used a little Mr. Surfacer 1000 that had thickened a bit as filler as my bottle is ancient on the horizontal tails and wing to fuselage joints. Drying over night a little bit of sanding with some "Stevens International" sanding sticks made things right. They come in various grits of 100 through 800 and are color coded, but for some reason they used Black for both the 100 and 600 grit sanding sticks. Next I painted the prop blades Flat Black and the separate spinner Red with two or three coats of Future. All the info I have on Col. Scott's aircraft shows the spinner to be O.D. but I went with the plans to add a little color to the model.

After all the sanding and everything was right I washed the model with some warn soapy water and let it dry over night covered to keep the dust off it. I then airbrushed the lower surfaces with Model Masters, Neutral Gray. Next using my printer I scaled the Marking and Painting plans to the model size. I then placed some Tamiya 18mm wide tape over both sides of the plan on the curved demarcation line between the wing and tail. I then placed this over my car's headlight that was on bright and was thus able to trace a line with a black pen and cut the pattern out. By doing this I had two identically cut pieces for both sides of the model. Tamiya tape peels off of paper very good. This works great for other types of camouflage patterns too. After these pieces were on the rest was easy but used a lot of tape and time. I them proceeded to airbrush the upper surfaces Model Master Olive Drab. I also found another use for my Elmer's glue as it fitted perfectly into the hole in the front of the fuselage. Next came three coats of future to include the instrument panel and them on with the decals. The plans show the back end of the tiger's mouth below the leading edge of the wing but to get the lower part that goes around the intake I had to orientate it above the wing. As I write this I noted that the picture of a completed model on the front page of the plans it is also above the wing. I place the eyes at a slant and below the exhaust pipes as the drawing of Col. Scott's aircraft had them that way.

After I was done with the model and had taken the pictures I noticed that Col. Scott's aircraft didn't have an antenna post - oh well too late to correct and that the serial number appears to have been painter over on the tail. That I can fix with a little dab of darker O.D. as shown in the drawings of the aircraft. All in all another fun build. My thanks for Dragon Models USA for the review kit.

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