vlog 25-15: Eduard 1/48 P-39L Part 1 – The Cockpit

Over the years I’ve built eight P-39s, in both 1/48 and 1/72 scale. I suppose that the Eduard kit is my favorite, as I’ve built four of those, and this current effort is five. (Made use of my math skills there!) While I have liked the others, the Eduard kit offers a great deal of flexibility in the number of variants that can be built, with just about anything from the D model up through the Q being possible, even the 4-bladed -21 and -25 variant of the Q.

And though I’ve built ten times more Spitfires (literally) the P-39 has always been a plane I admired. Though few remember it as anything more as a “hold the line” airframe (apart from the Soviets of course), the fact was that for the USAAF, the P-39 and the P-40 did hold the line. And though neither of those could be argued as even close in performance to later US fighters, they were what we had. And with some adjustments in tactics, went toe-to-toe with the best the Axis menace could muster.

And Another Eduard P-39

When I was looking to build a WWII fighter plane, after a break of many years, I first looked at several Spitfire kits I had in the stash. Yet my eye ultimately settled on an old dual-boxing I had from Eduard, the “P-39 Airacobra Mk. I” set. The markings in that set included RAF and Soviet variants of the Airacobra. However, the flexible nature of the sprues meant as long as I had markings, I could build any Airacobra I wanted.

I started off planning to build a two-color desert scheme, but as you’ll see by the time part 3 of this series comes out I ultimately switched to the simpler OD over neutral gray scheme.

But that’s later, of course. In this video, I paint the cockpit. The kit seat was replaced with a resin seat from Ultracast. I highly recommend their resin parts!