Tamiya 1/72 Fw-190 A3 – Black 27 5th Fighter Regiment "Blackhead" Karabas Company

Hi There,
This wee kit almost built itself. ~Everything fitted and only a minor amount of Mr. Dissolved Putty was required for the wing edges.

I wasn't certain what the interior cockpit colour should be so went with RLM66.
Painted with Colourcoats RLM02, RLM70 , RLM65 and RLM71. As always these went down beautifully with no problems.
Decals from Tigerhead Spitfires and Wurgers of the Turkish Airforce.
Finished with Winsor & Newton Galeria Satin.

The Tigerhead sheet showed a clean fuselage with no mottling and this was too stark for me, so online I found a photo of the real thing which appeared to show mottling.
This was applied.

This wouldn't be one of my builds if I didn't do something stupid to attempt to wreck it.
Whilst unmasking the canopy the decals on both sides stuck to the nitrile gloves and ripped off.

My fault entirely, obviously hadn't let the varnish coat harden sufficiently. Out with the sellotape but parts of the black transfer refused to come off.

So, how to try and save this. I had previously used the other numerals on the decal sheet so that was out. Right, so homemade ones then.
Printing done and Microscale decal film over the top. At this point I realised that some additional mottling was necessary to try and cover the errant bits of black. This didn't go work as well as the other mottling as I managed to get my aim wrong.
Decals on. A fresh spritz of Satin and then left for three days while i was back at work.
Aerial put on this morning.

All faults are entirely mine.
Soon to be taken up the road to try cheer the wee man up a bit as he is going stir crazy.

6 additional images. Click to enlarge.