The weekend is here , time for our hobby , so , back to bench !
One thing I reallize when I check better the parts of this kit , is although HPH have done a very good kit , the individual details suffered from "purity": the bolts, for example, are there (although not all) but their heads look like they are one with the rest of the piece, while they are also quite rounded instead of hexagons.
So the decision to upgrade by scratch-building what looked bad or wrong (and on this scale seems like a lot) was a one-way trip.
Using the UMM Hexagonal punch & die set (https://umm-usa.com/onlinestore/product_info.php?products_id=1870&osCsid=7893b4ba64b837ca265ff2337cea23c5) I cut and replace all (or almost all) the malformed bolts or I added where they were missing .
In some cases I use some micro bolts I have in stock from Knupfer (https://knupfer.info/shop/) .
Also I toned as much rivets as I can with drills .
The result is at least satisfactory and indeed makes quite a difference from the original , I hope you can see it in the photos .
In the meantime, I found some time to prepare - prime - sanding - painting and give some weathering , in a few words to finish the propeller with their spinner .
Following my reference photos plus everything I found on the internet about this airplane I concluded that the spinner whas painted with the standard black green (2/3) & white (1/3) having as an additional badge two yellow stripes, possibly as a reference to the pilot degree (Oberstleutnant) .
Looking better, it looks like the stripes have different widths , and the guns adjustment plate (essentially the base of the spinner , just in front of the coolant container or simple , the back plate) is painted white where the spinner is green and green where the spinner is white .
Nothing so difficult to achieve with some masking tape and with colors from Gunze range .
So far , so good , next stage is primer & painting the other parts , at the same time as upgrading and/or scratching some more parts .
13 attached images. Click to enlarge.