1/32 Revell Arado Ar196B
I’ve got this model as a gift from my students at the graduation of their 8th grade. This is Revell’s 1/32 scale plane based on their version of Ar196A-3. In fact, one can find this plane under the prototype Ar196V-4 D-OVMB. This is a Kriegsmarine’s Reconnaissance float plane. As far as I could find some more info only a few of this variant were ever built (ca 10 planes).
I got this model durin sightseeing tour last year on the 28. june. I instantly started building it. Cockpit went very well, main body, wing… also. But, during build of the nose and engine walls I was struck with so many problems. Parts couldn’t be aligned into right position. I could only see gaps, terrible gaps. I’ve been struggling with it, but finally I gave up.
Model stood on my shelf in bare plastic for almost half a year. Finally, some time ago I decided to do it until the end. In memory of my student whom I was professor for 8 beautiful years.
I put some plastic in the gaps, superglued it, the I put Tamiya White Putty. Then I was sanding, and filling, sanding and filling, for few days. Finally I had some progress with the nose and and the engine. I had to reshape whole nose because of so much sandin. After that I recribbed it and did some basic riveting.
Finally I could continue. Or no? Because, designers from revell thought that the real deal for canopy, windshield, protective glass is… Come on, make all the canopy parts from few smaller parts. Why some would just put good clear parts? Better way is to assemble them for some 2 or 3 days. then sand it, polish it, then again sand it, polish it… Then, after masking them, everythinf fell appart, and I had to do it from the very beginning. Very depressing.
I did some rigging with pylons and wings.
Whole model was primed with Mr. Black, then I had painted it with acrylic colors. I did some acrylic postshading with airbrush. Decals… ok, they are, I will just say poor. I had to throw away many bigger decals and paint it over the masks with airbrush. Whole flag part is painted with airbrush.
I did some basic weathering, put some oils into panels and I used dilluted cream brown oil paint from Abteilung 502 for filters.
This was prototype, so I didn’t want to overkill it with weathering. I painted the base with aotake color, simply because I thought that it was beuatiful shade to make some contrast.
So, thanks to my students for this beautiful gift, You always will be in my heart and memory!
Feel free to comment, cheers !
Aotake was close to (might even have been based on) RLM 63, the color several German aircraft exported to Japan were painted, so you made a good choice.
Could you make the choice to increase the lighting in your photos about 400%? I think your model is potentially very good, but I can't tell because I can't see it.
Tom, @eb801, @greenterrorz, @johnb, I made a mistake, my monitor is calibrated to work with color range dedicated to print, on my monitor I can see brighter, much brighter pictures. But, few minutes ago I loaded Imodeler via another pc and I can see that the pictures are way too dark 🙁 I would have to change background for photo shooting. Thank You for advice.
Looks incredible but it’s hard to see any detail as the photos appear very dark at my end.
As other have said, a bit of light would help express the details a bit better.
Nonetheless, exceptional build!
Based on the current pictures it looks already great, Djorde @sheol
Brighter pictures will definitely reveal much more of the beauty of your build.
Well done on this challellenging build, Djordje!
A great build !
From what can be seen, it is a beautiful build! Well done.