Greetings
from snow-bound Rock Hill, South Carolina. We had a 100-yr, 18"
snowfall this past weekend (27FEB04). I suppose this submission to
ARC, my third, almost makes me a regular contributor.
This
model depicts the P-47D-28-RE as flown by my neighbor, Ernest Sprouse in
1944-45 (512 FS, 406 FG, 9th AF). The kit is actually Hasegawa's
P-47D-25 which I bought at a hobbyshop in Pineville, NC. The kit decals were
that of Ernie's squadron mate (L3-O). I used the kit decals as
a base for replicating his aircraft (L3-Q). making the "Q"
was simply a matter of placing a black line, created from the unused D-Day
stripes, over the lower portion of the supplied "O". The main
differences between this kit and the P-47 I wanted to represent was
that Ernie's had no D-Day stripes and unique nose art on both sides of the
cowling. When Ernie arrived at the squadron, his crew chief already had
"Texas Kay" painted on the right side of the cowling. I am told
that payment in the form of a couple of bottles of whisky was all
that was needed to have the "Gladys" nose art painted on the left
side.
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To
create the custom decals, I started with a few old black and white photographs
which I scanned into my computer. I used Adobe Illustrator 10 to create
"Texas Kay" and Adobe Photoshop 7 to trace "Gladys". I
then imported the pictures into a Quark XPress 5.0 and printed them onto clear
decal sheet with a Hewlett Packard HP 8500DN color laserjet. The printed
decals looked great except that the light colors were quite transparent,
especially the skin tones of Gladys. I painted the skin with Model Masters Acryl
to make it opaque. My research failed to come up with any color photos, so I
used artistic license to color the nose art. There are a few discrepancies with
the custom decals I printed, for instance, the serial number is too large and
the white, drop shadow on both Texas Kay and Gladys is missing - my printer
can't print white.
Included with the
kit was the dorsal fin that was added to later P-47s to counteract bad flight
characteristics that arose as the result of removing the "razorback"
of early models. Ernie tells a story of how he experienced rudder lock (which
nearly killed him) early in his war-time flight career while dogfighting a
Bf109. After that incident he refused to go up in his aircraft until the
dorsal fin was installed.
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Building
this kit was straight forward; the Hasegawa kit is nice. The only real challenge
I had was attaching the lower wing to the fuselage; some shaping of the center,
rear portion of the wing was necessary to blend it into the fuselage. There were
also not enough pieces to assemble two bombs, so I omitted them from the completed
aircraft. For paint, my choice was Model Master Metalizer Buffing Aluminum
(from a spray can) and Model Master Acryl for the rest of the aircraft colors.
Some detail parts were painted with Model Master Enamels. After the painting was
finished and cured, I brush applied Testors Gloss Clear Acryl to prepare
for decaling. I used Micro-Sol setting solution so the thick decals
would conform to the aircraft. Before a final coat of Testors Dull Cote was
sprayed, I used black pastel chalk in a water/soap mixture (thanks Steve Bamford)
to darken the panel lines.
I'd
appreciate any input or critique you fellow ARCers might have. You may
contact Mr. Ernest Sprouse through his son, David by emailing him at kineticart@hotmail.com.
Photo
details - Camera: Nikon F; Flash:
Nikon SB-10 set on auto; Lens: Sigma Zoom-Master; Film: Kodak MAX 400. Shot at
f16, 1/60
Michael
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