The recent release of the Revell AG 1/32 P-51D Mustang was much anticipated by modelers of the type and scale. At last, a modern tooling that did not cost a fortune and was fairly accurate. I say 'fairly' as the usual suspects were able to find faults with it. Probably the biggest, and I don't consider it a fault, is that it was an early P-51D without the fin fillet. Now this really isn't bad if you want to do an early D model, but it did provide an opportunity to produce a fix.

This particular resin upgrade set was produced by a fellow from whom I had bought a few early Mustang fin sets in 1/72 and I was quite pleased with them. That being the case, I went to e-paid and ordered the 1/32 scale set. This arrived in short order.

You get a new upper and lower cowling piece, new tail with the fillet, new flaps (some of the kits have huge sink areas in them), new horizontal stabs and new elevators. This is very much a home brew set and it was soon obvious that these were not pressurized,  unlike what you get with the 'big boys' such as Aries resin, for instance.

The edges of some pieces are a bit rough as are the areas where the pieces attach to the sprue. One of the stabilizer pieces is a bit warped but easily cured with heat. I also found air pockets on a few pieces as well as some lumps and rough spots on others. None of these are insurmountable to most of us who have used garage resin kits/parts. However, what IS insurmountable was the mass of pinhole air bubbles on one of the flap pieces. I've experienced parts like this and even if you manage to fill them, sanding the area smooth will immediately bring up even more pinholes. An e-mai to the builder with the photo you see resulted in a new set of flaps being sent and they are superbly done with none of the previous glitches. Apparently the mold used for my set was at the end of its useful life.

This is a nice set that provides alternates to those kit parts that may well be inaccurate or with molding glitches. I did notice that he sells many of these pieces separately so if you only want to fix the tail, for instance, you can do that.

April 2018

Copyright Modeling Madness.com. All rights reserved.