Eduard 1/48 Fw-190
Posted: Fri Jul 12, 2013 7:59 pm
I'm calling this finished now.
It started off all smelling of roses, nicely detailed cockpit with lots of kit supplied PE. Instrument panels and the like are the pre painted type.
The nose mounted MGs, mounts and feed trays are all included with internal detail.
The BMW radial engine is built up with some really nice detail too.
That's when I encountered my first problems.
Dry fitting the fuselage halves together was proving to show some major fit issues.
Not normally a problem, but in this case I could see that if I corrected one part it would either exaggerate another, or have a knock on effect with fitting the canopy, wings or cowling.
I set the fuse aside and started on the wing sections before committing to any glueing.
The wings have plenty of internal detail showing the MG mounts and some ribs/spars, and this all went together nicely.
So it was back to the dry fitting again, and for the life of me I couldn't get the fracking thing to go together!
I spent all week trying. 'If I trim this to fit, that won't fit' 'If I fill this, that will fit, but then they won't fit'. This was all that seemed to be going round in my head for days!
In the end I ripped out the engine, which would be covered anyway, and employed LOTS of CA, G clamps, rubber bands, clothes pegs and the kitchen sink. Then by sitting on it like an over filled suitcase, I finally got it to close up. Phew!
Once that was done, it was on with the paint/decals.
The kit comes with 10! Decal options from the famous Jg54 'GrunHerz', and I opted for that of Lt. Hans Dortenmann, 2 Staffel/JG 54. This guy must've been a natural, apparently he flew against Brits, Russians and Americans and got 38 kills in the space of 14 months, and he was only 23!!!
This Fw has a blue band with a red stripe on the rear fuselage which was III Gruppes 'Defence of the Reich' ID.
'Red 1' indicates that it's the Staffel CO's aircraft.
The colour callouts are RLM 74/75/76 so I thought, 'great, I've just bought the Vallejo RLM set, so no probs'
Now I'm no paint expert, but the RLM 74 and 75 shown in the Eduard instructions are 2 very different colours. A light gray and a green gray to my eyes?
However, my Vallejo RLM 74 and 75 came out barely distinguishable from one another, and were much darker than Eduards pictures.
So I thought 'sod it, I know how I want it to look!' And grabbed some colours that I thought would look nice!
So there you go, after all that, I don't think it turned out too bad. Just don't look too hard at the wing root MG covers! Lol.
Thank you for your patience!
It started off all smelling of roses, nicely detailed cockpit with lots of kit supplied PE. Instrument panels and the like are the pre painted type.
The nose mounted MGs, mounts and feed trays are all included with internal detail.
The BMW radial engine is built up with some really nice detail too.
That's when I encountered my first problems.
Dry fitting the fuselage halves together was proving to show some major fit issues.
Not normally a problem, but in this case I could see that if I corrected one part it would either exaggerate another, or have a knock on effect with fitting the canopy, wings or cowling.
I set the fuse aside and started on the wing sections before committing to any glueing.
The wings have plenty of internal detail showing the MG mounts and some ribs/spars, and this all went together nicely.
So it was back to the dry fitting again, and for the life of me I couldn't get the fracking thing to go together!
I spent all week trying. 'If I trim this to fit, that won't fit' 'If I fill this, that will fit, but then they won't fit'. This was all that seemed to be going round in my head for days!
In the end I ripped out the engine, which would be covered anyway, and employed LOTS of CA, G clamps, rubber bands, clothes pegs and the kitchen sink. Then by sitting on it like an over filled suitcase, I finally got it to close up. Phew!
Once that was done, it was on with the paint/decals.
The kit comes with 10! Decal options from the famous Jg54 'GrunHerz', and I opted for that of Lt. Hans Dortenmann, 2 Staffel/JG 54. This guy must've been a natural, apparently he flew against Brits, Russians and Americans and got 38 kills in the space of 14 months, and he was only 23!!!
This Fw has a blue band with a red stripe on the rear fuselage which was III Gruppes 'Defence of the Reich' ID.
'Red 1' indicates that it's the Staffel CO's aircraft.
The colour callouts are RLM 74/75/76 so I thought, 'great, I've just bought the Vallejo RLM set, so no probs'
Now I'm no paint expert, but the RLM 74 and 75 shown in the Eduard instructions are 2 very different colours. A light gray and a green gray to my eyes?
However, my Vallejo RLM 74 and 75 came out barely distinguishable from one another, and were much darker than Eduards pictures.
So I thought 'sod it, I know how I want it to look!' And grabbed some colours that I thought would look nice!
So there you go, after all that, I don't think it turned out too bad. Just don't look too hard at the wing root MG covers! Lol.
Thank you for your patience!
Very nicely done. Love the photographs. Well lit.