Today I would like to present you with my second installment of the Airacobra model, this time the P-39N in 1/48 scale. The model was assembled almost entirely straight out of the box, with minimal modifications. How did the work on it go? I’m already telling you.
This time I set myself a challenge – to assemble the model without any major modifications, but with a certain ease during painting. I decided to paint the wings and fuselage separately, and only join them together after applying decals and weathering. I wanted to see how well the model fitted together and at the same time make my painting job easier. In a previous project I had problems painting the fuselage and wing transition, which ended up creating dust and having to sand down the paint layer. Painting the parts separately was to help avoid similar problems.
As for the fit of the kit, it needed some minor care – the positioning pins and tabs are a bit too big, which required some gentle cleaning. I also mentioned this in a previous post about the first Cobra (I encourage you to read it before starting work on the model): [link to entry].
Valorisation of the model was limited to drilling out the barrels and exhaust tubes, adding antennas and the bomb rack, which Tomek Gronczewski 3D printed for me (there is a link to free 3D files of the cockpit details and bomb rack in the model instructions). Be sure to take a look at his blog:[link to blog].
The only problem I encountered was that there was no mention in the instructions of the need to remove the small fairing in front of the nose landing gear hatch, which is only found on the P-39Q version. I only noticed this when applying the shark’s mouth motif decal, which didn’t want to go on properly. It was only after applying Microscale Sol liquid that the decal adhered properly. I removed the fairing with a pair of pliers and, after smoothing the surface, improved the paint job with a brush.
The finished model sits proudly on the shelf next to its older sister, the P-39Q, with its distinctive ‘cobra’ look.
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