Dragon

1/32 F-6D Mustang

Kit Number: 3202n

Reviewed by  Fred Amos, IPMS# 6672

MSRP: $46.95 Dragon USA Web Site: www.dragonmodelsusa.com Introduction: What a thrill opening this box. This kit appears to be everything I had ever heard about it. Seven sprues of gray plastic, three of clear parts, photo etch, rubber wheels, this will be a challenge. For a more detailed description of the box contents see Dick Montgomery's earlier review of kit # 3201, the P-51 D. The assembly process involves a lot of sub-assemblies so I will describe them one at a time. Nose and engine assembly: The engine area consists of 32 pieces and includes the engine support structure and the supercharger. Assembly is pretty straightforward and the only problem I encountered were the color callouts as interpreted by Dragon. Some of the parts don't have a color called out, and some that do appear to be wrong. I base this on my use of Bert Kinzey's Detail and Scale Volume 51 on the P-51 D through F-82 H. Page 35 clearly shows the engine supports as a yellow chromate and the firewall and oil tank as green chromate. That's the way I went with it. Besides, the instructions refer to a Gunze color H-80/54 but it isn't on the color chart at the top of the page. I assembled this area pretty quickly so I didn't get everything perfect. This whole assembly is very fragile so careful handling is needed. I left the exhaust pieces off and I will explain that later. Cockpit and radio compartment: While the cockpit in this kit is very detailed, there are a few problems. The instructions call out the small parts for the sidewalls but only point to the general area of where they are supposed to be located. For instance, when you assemble the pieces to the sidewalls as instructed in section four, compare section four with the drawing of the finished assembly in section six and seven. You will a see few discrepancies. I suggest you start the assembly at the top and work down, dry fitting the floor occasionally to be sure it fits. The seat and pilot armor plate are assembled and painted but no color is called for the cushion or brass seat belts. I cut the belts from the fret and shaped them to the seat before painting them. I painted the cushion a light tan and the seat belts the same tan with a little brown added to provide a color contrast, and then carefully painted the buckles with some Floquil Old Silver. Then I used a thick super glue to attach the belts to the seat. I had to cut about a quarter inch off the end of the belt that went through the top of the seat. It would have interfered with the seat fitting the armor plate. After the seat and armor plate were installed I realized it probably should go back a little further than it did. The gun sight is a jewel in itself. It has nine pieces counting the clear piece. However be sure to orient part # I-9 so that the protrusion on the bottom is toward the rear. If you put it toward the front the sight will not fit on to part # I-4. I left the clear reflector part off till just before the canopy is put in place. Another plus is the instrument panel. You are given a choice of a gray plastic piece, a clear piece, or a photoetch instrument array and to top it off the instrument faces are individual decals, 15 pieces. I used the photoetch and it does look impressive. Radiator and exhaust chute: The radiator is two pieces glued back to back with the option of a brass facing. I chose not to use the brass as I felt it would be too difficult super gluing the brass to the painted plastic and still look right. The radiator is glued to the exhaust chute and that is glued to the back of the decking that is the floor for the fuel tank. The brass piece that represents the radiator intake is a little too tall to fit in to the place it belongs. I cut 1/8th inch off the top and super glued it into place. Good fit. Before these entire component parts are glued into the fuselage halves don't forget to install the clear parts that make up the camera ports in the left fuselage half. A note of caution here. On the clear parts sprue, parts J-1 and J-6 and parts J-2 and J-5 are misidentified. Also part J-6 is too big for the hole in the side of the fuselage so rather than enlarged the hole I used Micro Kristle-Kleer. I used Kristle Kleer in the hole in the bottom of the fuselage also. Part J-2 is the mount for a loop antenna and was not used at this time. The fuselage halves went together effortlessly. I fed liquid glue into the seams starting on the bottom and working forward to the top. I wanted to do something to allow me to put a radio antenna wire on the model. I took about one inch of fine wire from an old lamp cord, folded it and trapped it between the vertical rudder halves leaving just enough of a loop to thread some invisible thread into. The seams were very tight and there were a few sink holes so a little Mr. Surfacer 1200 was all that was needed to fill them in. The excess Mr. Surfacer was removed with a rag soaked in denatured alcohol after it dried. Back to the engine compartment: I had decided early on in the build of this model that I didn't want to leave the engine exposed. With that in mind I left the exhaust stacks off because I was afraid they would be lost under the cowling covers. Dry fitting the cowl covers, which I found to be a very good fit, I found this to be true. I experimented with positioning the stacks and decided to glue a piece of sheet styrene as a stand off panel behind the opening for the stacks. After the model was painted and decaled I would glue the painted stacks into the slot. Horizontal Stabilizers: Here again I found parts misnumbered. At assembly E and F, the elevators are called as A-8 and B-2. It should be B-2 and B-8. The elevators are made to be moveable, which is not to my taste but may be to others. A small piece of wire is shaped to be trapped between the upper and lower halves. This is all that holds the parts together until the stabilizer is glued into the slot of the fuselage. The moveable rudder has to be put together while positioning it around hinges on the rudderpost and the trim tab is positioned in the rudder with out gluing it in. It works out but for my part they could have gotten by with just a few tabs to fit into slots. Fitting the stabilizers to the fuselage presented a problem. When the pin in the elevators is in the hole in the fuselage it forces the elevator to spread out at the outboard hinge. So I enlarged the hole for the pin and glued the elevators to the trailing edge at a slight droop and glued the assembly to the fuselage. But there wasn't enough plastic surface making contact with the fuselage to get a good bond so I used super glue to set it. Assembling the wings: With the fuselage relatively complete, I moved on to the wing. I didn't like the idea of having the guns protruding from the leading edge of the wings while I was sanding and handling the model. Also the instructions call for the gun tray to be assembled and glued to the upper wing before putting the upper wing to the lower wing. But the tray doesn't fit the depression in the upper wing. So I built a wall of sheet styrene and calculated where the gun barrels would touch it. I drilled three holes in the wall and super glued some straight pins in from the backside. After the glue set hard I cut the pins to ¼ inch long. Referring to Bert Kinzey's Detail and Scale Volume 51, page 21, I found that the gun barrels did not protrude evenly from the leading edge of the wing. The two outboard gun barrels stand out a few inches from the edge and the inboard gun is almost flush with the edge. This is because the inboard gun is placed a bit aft to make room for the ammunition belts to fit to the breach. I have some brass tubing that is close enough to the correct size of the .50 caliber barrels so I decided to make my own. I carefully cut the tube to the correct length and reamed out the ends so it would slip over the end of the straight pin. I would super glue the tubes over the pins later. The instructions would have you assemble the flaps and ailerons the same way as the elevators attach to the stabilizers, trapping them in the trailing edge of the wing before you glue the upper wing into place. This was not to my taste, so I chose to glue the lower wing in place and install the flaps and ailerons after the upper wing was secured in place. It's a good thing I did because the lower wing did not fit well to the fuselage. The wheel well was in the way. I had to take a coarse sanding stick and sand the top of the wheel well till it was very thin and then sand away the flange of the wing root on the fuselage. It was tight but I finally managed to get the wing in place. I had earlier noticed that the lower wing had holes in it for mounting rocket launch pylons. I had no intention of using the rockets so I laid a piece of sheet plastic over the holes so I could fill them later. The upper wing halves fit perfectly and that created another problem. There was a pretty large gap in the wing root. It was about 3/32 of an inch at the leading edge tapering to nothing about ¼ inch from backside. I considered putting stretched sprue in the opening but knew it would take a lot so I took some old Contrail airfoil strut and laid it into the opening, softening it with liquid cement and pushing it in place. After that had dried I chiseled away the excess and filled the rest of the seam with Tamiya putty. When this was sanded smooth I was happy with the result. I sanded down the putty in the hole for the launch rails and was going to glue the under wing pylons in place when I realized that the end of the pylon was covering one of the shell ejection chutes. Again referring to Kinsey's D&S #51 page 21, I plugged the holes and drilled new ones so that the end of the pylon was between two smaller holes and in the middle of two of the ejection chutes. I attached the ailerons to the wings in a neutral position and set it aside to dry.

Canopy and windscreen: Inspecting the sliding canopy I found a visible mold seam across the top. I sanded it out with a few sanding sticks and then polished it out with Plastic Polish by Bare Metal. The secret to this polish is to stir and shake it up well then spread it on thick and let it dry. Then wipe it off briskly polishing to a bright finish. I dipped both pieces in Future Floor Wax, wicked off the excess and left standing to dry. It looks better than before.

When I dry fitted the windscreen into place it wouldn't fit. It turned out that the curved piece that meets at the top of the fuselage is misshaped. A half round file and a couple of minutes yielded a reasonably good fit. I tack glued both clear parts into place using Testors Canopy and Clear Parts Cement so I could remove them later on. I masked the parts with Tamiya Tape. Landing gear: The landing gear legs are models unto themselves. Each leg has eight plastic pieces and a small spring. All of the parts for each leg are on parts tree C, and there are two of those so be careful selecting parts when considering left and right legs. The idea is to trap the spring and the shaft of each leg between the two upper parts that create a sleeve for the shaft to slide in. But gluing the two upper parts together will assuredly weld the shaft to the inside of the upper pieces which is exactly what it did for me. This feature would have been well enough left out for me. After the gear legs were assembled and painted I attached the kit provided brake lines. To place the gear to the wing you must tip the leg and insert a round pin into a hole in the back wall of the wheel well and then straighten it. It is a tight fit and you may have to carefully sand some of the pin away so be careful not to over do it. When I glued the gear legs into place and went to attach the gear covers I found another problem. The covers were at a terrible angle to the wing and legs. To be completely honest, this may have been my own fault. In struggling to get the gear into place I may have exaggerated the angle of the legs. Painting: I painted the glare shield with Tamiya Acrylic Olive Drab and after it was dry I coated it with Testors Glosscoat. Later I masked that off and got some of my old Humbrol paints. I painted the upper wing with Humbrol #11 flat aluminum because the Mustang had the upper wing painted with an Aluminum Lacquer to cut down the glare to the pilot. I also painted the rudder because it is an aluminum framework covered with an aluminum-doped fabric. I used Humbrol #56 which is a darker aluminum on the bottom of the wing. I have seen film of this darker area as the Mustang peels away from the camera and I believe it is the armor plate for the cockpit or a fuel tank in the wing. I could be wrong but that's my theory and I'm sticking to it. I also used this color on the darker area noticeable around the exhausts. I finished the painting by masking off selected panels and used some of my old Floquil railroad colors, Platinum Mist and Bright Silver. These are still very good paint after all these years. Decaling: After I had sprayed a coat of Future Floor Wax onto the model I moved on to decaling. The decals are very thin and in perfect registry. The black and white checkered pattern on the nose comes in three pieces and the fit was fine even if I did mess it up a little. The checkered pattern on the rudder is a little too big and the checkers don't line up on the leading edge. The six black I.D. bands for the wings and stabilizers are one piece even though you have the option of dropped flaps and drooping elevators. I cut then decals to length and applied them separately. Almost ever little stencil is included but then there could have been five red circles for the fuel filler caps and a black one for the ground bus under the canopy rail. A second coat of Future and the model is set aside to dry. Small details: I had previously painted the spinner with Floquil Conrail Blue and the propeller blades black and sprayed Future on them so it is time to put the blades in to the spinner. After the blades are glued into the back plate I carefully glued the spinner to the back plate and touched up the chipped paint. It was a perfect fit to the nose. I wondered about the angle of the blades but that is beyond the scope of my knowledge. But alas, after discussing it and showing the prop to several friends we have come to the conclusion that the airfoil of the blades are 180 degrees off. That is to say, the round surface is on the back side and the concave surface is in front. The hydraulic retraction ram for the inner main gear doors is made up of two small cylinders without a rod to connect to the doors. I drilled holes in each end of the part and super glued some stainless steel wire. One end was cut short to fit into a hole in the well and the other was left about an inch long until the parts were fit into the well and then cut to the proper length. The tail wheel strut had to be placed between the fuselage halves when they were put together. I left it loose so it wouldn't get broken but when I removed masking tape after painting. yep, you guessed it. It broke at the point where it attaches to the part that swivels back and forth. It would have been just as well to have left a slot in the fuselage to slide the leg into, after all the handling was done. I drilled a hole in the swivel part and the shaft and super glued a length of paper clip wire into the shaft. After all the handling was done I super glue the shaft to the swivel. Another minor problem that I didn't notice until the model was finished and photographed is the serial number on the tail. The box art shows the number as 414306 but the instructions say to use 494786. There is no number 414306 on the decal sheet. D'oh!!!! My dyslexia strikes again. The only other problem worth mentioning is that for all of the detail in this kit, one very obvious item is missing. There is no under wing pitot tube. Conclusions: This model is very well detailed. You have to watch out for contradictions in the instructions and some fit issues. Many of the finer details are hidden after construction.in the wings and fuselage so one wonders the point of providing them. A casual or novice modeler should tackle some easier projects before attempting to build this kit. However, an experienced modeler will find it a worthwhile challenge. Thanks to Dragon for providing the kit for review and IPMS/USA for allowing me to review it.

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