1/48 Hasegawa P-40E

by Bill Lachance

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I built Hasegawa's recent Curtiss P-40E kit with Eduard's photoetched detail set. There are two frets in the PE set, one being their color "Zoom" item. The instrument panel, placards, seat belts, and dials are nicely rendered. None of the interior green items are painted, so color-matching or repainting is not an issue. I really like the placards, and wish that Eduard would release frets of these.

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Much has been said on the internet about Hasegawa's use of plugs on the fuselage to facilitate molding of multiple versions of the P-40 from the same basic molds. I glued these plugs to the fuselage halves, aligning them with the panel lines. A little filling was necessary, but there were no "steps" when I assembled the fuselage halves. The gun inserts for the wings needed filler also, but nothing major.

I really can't say enough about the Eduard details. They include the radiator flaps, all the gear doors, the mechanism that rotated the undercarriage during retraction, separate supports for the drop tank or bomb, the ring and bead sight, and all of the trim tab actuators. It is a marvelous detail set.

I removed the sighting glass from the reflector sight, and added pieces cut from thin clear sheet. The "headache pad" was cut from styrene, and painted a leather color.

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I used decals from Eduard to model an "Aleutian Tiger." The decals conformed to the surface detail well, and the fuselage band actually fit. The tail numbers were translucent, so I carefully overpainted them with a sharp #000 brush.

The finished model captures the look of the P-40E very well, in my opinion. The kit and detail set are a great combination.

Bill

Visit my website to see other models of mine, I also build models on commission.  http://www.pix.prettyneatinc.com/

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Photos and text © by Bill Lachance