P-51 Mustang WIP

[gamary]

You might want to reconsider the embossing of your rivets.

Interesting. The rivets are only a spot of white, with some dirt around them. No embossing or anything. As rivets become more and more visible when the airframe ages and the paint job wears and gets thinner, I wanted to make them more visible. Maybe I did it a bit too much. I'll look into it. Probably, I just need to lower the opacity.

@Jarink: thanks for pointing the difference in bomb shackles. I'll have to correct the drawing for that and for the wingtip light. Once it's done, I'll repost. I'm considering hiring you as my Mustang consultant.

IIRC, there were also some Mustangs with 3 lights beneath the wingtip. Does anybody know more about this?

[GiantFlyingRobots]

OK. fair enough...Its just the way that I perceive them.

3 under wing lights are on the starboard side.

[Vacajun]

GM, per Jarink and GFR's comments on the lights, here's a shot of the lower right wing tip of a P-51C looking toward the rear showing the tip light and the three underwing recognition lights (amber, green, and red).

[Supah]

You know what would be really cool? A collage of all the different peoples P-51's, Gaëtan's, GFR's, Jesters and all those others (and even mine! HAH! ) So we could see any differences.

[Vacajun]

GM, a great high-resoultion pic of the wing lights on a P-51D taken in 1945 is at:

http://lisar.larc.nasa.gov/IMAGES/LA...003-00319.jpeg

[Jarink]

Best picture I can find of the bomb shackles... not very side-on, but close. This is actually a P-51A (note the belly scoop), but it was the same as the B/C.

[gamary]

OK. fair enough...Its just the way that I perceive them.

Don't think so. Your comment is valid and I do intend to modify the drawing accordingly.

Jarink, thanks for the extra pictures.

For some reason, I missed the the recognition lights? Where they installed on all early versions or did they appear with the B/C model? Looks like quite a few of my profiles are going to need some correcting.

[CRIPES_A_MIGHTY]

Out of interest guys...how big are you making these profiles?.....Like pixels?
I assume they must be pretty big to show the kind of detail you are working in..like rivets. The files must be pretty sizable...
Cheers!

[gamary]

My P-51 files are 4134 px wide, which is 35 cm at 300 dpi. I forget what the height is.

I generally find that 30/35 cm width at that resolution is quite enough. Even when printed on A3, you're losing part of the details. I usually try to keep my files under 100 Mo a piece. Above that, my good ole computer starts smoking and stuff.

[Jarink]

For some reason, I missed the the recognition lights? Where they installed on all early versions or did they appear with the B/C model? Looks like quite a few of my profiles are going to need some correcting.

They started being installed on the wing during B production. The white light mentioned is a few inches aft of the radio mast.

IIRC, the RAF tried putting them on the belly scoop, but switched to the wing because that installation interfered with the radiator. I can't find anything solid like a photo to confirm this, but I remember it being a topic on the P51SIG forum a while back. Unfortunately, that site had a crash and rebirth a couple months ago and all the old threads were lost.