Tuesday, April 27, 2021

P-51H Mustang, NACA

In my collection of P-51 I was missing a very special one, the post-war lightened version, the P-51H, a model that is not available, there are several out there, vacuformed, but they are rare and expensive, but I realized that the old Necomisa model, which is a very bad representation of a P-51D, perhaps the worst of all, with a poorly proportioned fuselage and very short wings, is so bad that it could perhaps very well represent a P-51H.

In my collection I already had one of these, which I had painted to represent a Uruguayan plane:


After reviewing some plans and comparing dimensions I realized that it would be very easy to modify it, I even suspect that the Mustang, on which Paul Lindberg based to make his model, must have been an ANG's P-51H, not a P -51D of the war, the model is too close to the dimensions of the H.


This model has a long history, it was one of the first of Lindberg, back in the sixties, with the primitive technology of that time, it was produced for many years, until Lindberg created the new and magnificent mold of the P-51B, selling the old to Necomisa, which continued to produce it in Mexico for many more years, sometime in the eighties or nineties, they invented a new brand, called Pegaso, which was the last to produce it, with horrible friction stickers and accompanied by a paper diorama.

To add interest to the matter, in my investigation of the P-51H, I found a reference to its evaluation by the NACA, (the predecessor of NASA), and some very good photos, so I ended up painting it in that decoration, An experimental aircraft, which served for many years, in what would later become the North American space agency and what has given me a new idea, to start a collection of NASA models.





The paint is El Viejo Marino, all the decoration by brush.