Academy's 1/72 scale
P-40N Warhawk RNZAF

by Alan Sannazzaro

Academy's 1/72 scale P-40N Warhawk is available online from Squadron

This model started out life as a quick build to get me back into modelling.

The fit is near perfect, the only exception being the leading edge wing join to the fuselage behind the cowl flaps, which required minimal thinning. I was impressed with the thinness of the propellor blades.

Improvements to the kit include:

Thinning the gear doors, and reshaping curved door

• Opening the cowl flaps correctly as the kit has them 1/2 open, 1/2 closed,

• Scratch building the drop tank sway braces, as the kit parts were to big,

• Scratch built gunsight,

• Brake lines added,

• Drilling out the guns and exhaust openings,

• Adding external 'gear down' indicators

• Repositioning the vertical stabiliser to an offset position.

I painted the model using a mix of Tamiya and Gunze acrylics trying to get the effect of a well weathered sun faded aircraft based in the pacific. This particular aircraft was based at Ondonga, New Georgia, with the colour scheme based around 1943. The weathering was done with both airbrush and chalk pastels.

An interesting point I noted with the photos I saw of RNZAF P-40N's was the chipped leading edges of the wings, but a near perfect condition propellor. As with all my canopies, I have dipped it in Future.

The decals were from AeroMaster's booklet "The Royal New Zealand Air Force in WWII". I slid them on with Future, which also helped them settle down well. I found the decals to be quite good, nicely thin, good register and correct colours. This set of decals are quite hard to find these days, but if you have a set I can recommend them.

Overall, Academy's 1/72 scale P-40N was an enjoyable build with no major problems to report.

• 
• 
• 

Thumbnail panels:

Model, Images and Text Copyright © 2010 by Alan Sannazzaro
Page Created 11 May, 2010
Last Updated 11 May, 2010

Back to HyperScale Main Page