After having read the various reviews in the days prior to the release of Dragon's P-51D, I swayed back and forth between whether to buy one or not. My local hobby shop had some in stock and, using the Christmas money sent to me by my sister, bought one. Upon opening the box, I was neither shocked nor surprised by what I found. The reviews I read were quite thorough.

I have seen other Nautilus products before, but this is the first one I have ever worked with. I cut the fuselage off the sprue to test fit the replacement floor. The floor itself is a bit over 3/8ths of an inch longer than the kit part, but Nautilus thankfully inserted two cut-outs where the kit part would mount into the fuselage. Test fitting showed t

hat the Nautilus replacement fits perfectly. The kit part is 1/10^th inch narrower at the forward bulkhead, and .047” too narrow at the aft end. The forward bulkhead is shorter than the kit part by .041”, but the kit’s bulkhead is actually narrower than the kit’s cockpit floor!

There is one missing detail on the floor. There is an opening where the control stick and instrument panel meet the floor. I carved out that area to replicate the look of the opening. I had done this previously on a 1/48 Tamiya P-51B when I replaced the cockpit floor with basswood. If you want to carve out the opening, just use the kit part as a guide. If you mess up, just turn it over and start again. You will also have to cut the fuel tank from the kit’s floor and mount it onto the aft deck.

For the price of $10 (plus postage), you get two complete sets of the floorboards and bulkheads. This is a limited time offer, but such a sweet deal for the great improvement over the kit parts.

 Thanks to Scott Van Aken who placed the offer to review the Nautilus set.

Review set courtesy of www.nautilusmodels.com

January 2007