1/48 Modelcraft XP 82

Gallery Article by Ulysses Almeida on Jan 22 2021

 

      

I am an enthusiast of the 1:48th scale.  Having built all regular mustang types, only the F82 was missing. Then I found out that Modelcraft had released the model. I bought one and I saw immediately that the model was very crude. Painfully so. In my disillusion I put it aside and so it rested for many a good year. A few weeks ago I saw on Youtube that a flying F82 existed, and so I looked for some information on the plane. I got so excited by the story and the owner's perseverance that I decided to build his XP 82. Why XP and not F? He found prototype #2. Not a production airplane.

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I took the Modelcraft model out of "Limbo" and built his XP 82 Twin Mustang as it was seen at Oshkosh 2019. And why did I build it in a flying display? So I would use the minimum amount of parts. The less parts you use the less imperfections appear. I also put a civilian pilot on the driver seat wearing the same clothes as the pilot at Oshkosh. I think I got it close enough. The exhaust manifold was scratch built out of syringe needles and all aluminum paints are Revell. Lots of putty and sanding.

A bit of history about this plane. 
While visiting an inveterate collector of anything with wings, Tom stumbled across a North American F82 Twin Mustang which he instantly fell in love with. He mentioned he would be interested in purchasing the plane but in reality he didn’t have the money at the moment. In 1997 he was once again in Ohio to appraise a Republic F 84 Thunderstreak. While stomping around in the snow he spied what appeared to be a Mustang fuselage buried under some corrugated metal sheeting, when he said to the collector, “I didn’t know that you had another Mustang,” The collector informed him that what he was looking at was actually a prototype for the Twin Mustang. . The ‘XP’ #44-83887 was one of two prototype planes for the series and early production planes. 

Ulysses Almeida

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Photos and text © by Ulysses Almeida