Tomofumi Tsukada built beautiful Airacobra in boxart ‘Old Crow’ scheme. This is personal aeroplane of Clarence E. ‘Bud” Anderson, the last living triple-ace of the USAAF. On Friday 2nd December 2022 ‘Bud’ Anderson was promoted to Brigadier General! This gallery is only a beginning, expect more about General ‘Bud’ Anderson this week. Stay tuned!
Tomofumi described us his work on Airacobra in detail:
Hello all Arma Hobby fans around the world. I’m Tomofumi Tsukada, a Japanese Arma Hobby fan. I am very happy to have the opportunity to write about my work on Armahobbynews.
At this time, I built Arma Hobby brand-new kit 1/72 P-39Q as a final model of AIRACOBRA, and this is a fighter plane that not only was used at the U.S. Army Air Force but also was exported around the world. Arma Hobby’s latest 1/72 kit is modelled with a good capture of the characteristics of the P-39Q. I was highly motivated to build this kit after seeing the parts with super details which are packed tightly in the three runner frames.
The only thing that bothered me with this kit was that there are five attractive markings.
I was quite unsure which one to choose, but finally I decided to build the aircraft shown on the boxart, USAAF 363rd fighter squadron, Lt. Clarence “Bud” Anderson’s “OLD CROW”. This aircraft was a plane that he was riding until he moved to the 8th Air Force in Europe and switched to the P-51B, and he became a triple ace who had achieved the results of shooting down a total of 16.25 German planes by the end of the WWII with his P-51B/D. He retired USAF at the rank of Colonel in 1971. Now Anderson became 100 years old this year, and it’s amazing.
The build
Now, let’s start making the kit. In order to build a kit with 3D printed parts, which is a special offer for pre-order, I carefully cut and removed those supports not to put stress on delicate 3D parts. Arma Hobby’s kit has enough details for plastic parts alone, but the details are more attractive by applying 3D printed parts. Referring to the instructions and photos of the actual airplane, each part is carefully painted, and a dry brushed with the paint slightly lighter than the cockpit color, highlighting the details. Then, carefully position the decal on the instrument panel of the cockpit, and use a strong decal softener to adjust it to the instrument panel structure. After drying, I applied a flat clear to adjust the difference in luster and poured clear paint into the instrument gauges to reproduce the glass surface.
I’m posting a picture of the cockpit part. It’s a surprising detail, as expected of Arma Hobby!
When the cockpit is done, the body part building follows. It fits well, so I was able to assemble it stress-free and concentrate on the painting process immediately.
Painting, Decals, Weathering
Firstly, I applied the thin base of CREOS Black Primer 1500, and then did pre-shading with CREOS C1 white lacquer paint. After that, I applied a body color (HATAKA C033, C018) as thin as possible to make use of pre-shading, and the base painting is complete.
After this, I put a decal on it. The decal attached to Arma Hobby’s kit is very good quality and easy to apply. Even if you don’t use a softener, you can get used to fit into details.
Next, moving to weathering process. This P-39Q “OLD CROW” had no actual battle experience, and even if I looked at the pictures of the actual airplane, it was in a beautiful state. So I’ll keep it in moderate weathering for my model. First, wash it with AK Intaractive’s panel liner to highlight the details of the panel line. Next, I used oil paint to add a little expression to the painted surface. The step area, etc. is chipped in silver where the paint is easy to peel off on the actual airplane. Also soot after exhaust was applied with black weathering powder. Finally, the CTROS GX114 “flat” super smooth clear is applied, the painting process is completed. After final assembly done, it was finally completed!
Summary
I could fully enjoy building Arma Hobby’s 1/72 P-39Q kit. Parts detail and assemblability is highly balanced. If you are WW2 aeroplane model enthusiast, I strongly recommend you to get the kit at once.
Check General Clarence ‘Bud’ Anderson’s the ‘Old Crow’ aeroplane kits:
- Order the P-39Q Airacobra ‘Old Crow’ model kit in the Arma Hobby online store
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