Having an authentic WWII cockpit section is something I always wanted, however, these just don’t grow on trees and could take quite a long time to acquire the right offer. I was looking through some forums many years ago and I came across a guy in the UK that has built himself a 1:1 P-51D cockpit section, and it was definitely huge inspiration for me to give it a go. That guy was Gary Dean.
The main goal with this project was to try do absolutely as much of it as possible by myself where I could, and just outsource some very small sections that are a tad out of my league. Here you can see the initial floor section that has been built onto a steel frame and the firewall section cut from 6mm aluminum and attached to a ply backing. This was initially armor plate during the war.
Also you can see an example of the pedal restoration I did plus the start of scratch building the trim pedestal. This was built using a mix of metal, wood and acrylic.
