Nice masking paint work Louis!
Indeed MRP dries fast and smooth, but careful when masking. I had a few mishaps in that, even with more than 24 hours of drying time.
I’m not too sure if the underwing balkenkreuz is without white borders, seems to have a thin border, much like the standard upper wing ones. Anyway looks great!

Last night I made some considerable progress on Weiss 43. I also suffered a set back, but it too was handled. Please follow along and I'll explain.

Starting with the werke number on the vertical fin:
Here you can see how I replaced the second from last number.

In doing so, I accidentally chopped off the lower portion of the "9". However it actually made it look more like a 9, so I decided to roll with it. I might end up replacing the last number too.


I touched up the white paint on the sides of the fuselage #43 where the home made masks didn't leave a nice crisp edge. In doing this it made the appearance of the white paint look uneven and somewhat mottled. This happened because the majority of the numbers were air brushed on, and I attempted the touch up using a paint brush. It was very visible and looked bad.

So I tried sanding off the offending thick areas. This in turn caused damage to the underlying RLM 76 base paint.
One thing led to another, and I got disgusted so I sanded everything off down to the bare plastic.
The next step was to spray on some touch up RLM 76 after the rest of the fuselage was masked off.

These areas were then sprayed again, and this is how it looked at this point in the game.


Removing the masking tape revealed a nice sight. The bad areas were now fixed.

Texting with Tom Bebout about this number problem, he asked me about using decals for the numbers. I didn't want to go this route originally. But at this point I simply wanted to get it done. I had an idea to combine several decal numbers (as 6 or upside down 9 and a 7). I also had a #4 that was very close, but it needed a little trimming to look more like the ones in the photos.

After trimming off part of the 6 I applied them and this is how they looked.


I realized they are not exactly in the same position, nor are they exactly the same size, but they are close enough for me.

After carefully trimming off more of the # 6 and #7, I ended up with this.
I zoomed in on the actual photos to get a good idea about where they were exactly located.


Going back to Pedro's observations I decided to change this up some too. I took a spare upper wing Cross early war style insignia and cut off the outer black right angle sections. This left a small white border. These modified decals were then applied over the existing ones I had sprayed on earlier.

So far, so good.

As always, comments are encouraged.

Although it took some time, in the end it looks amazing, Louis @lgardner
After your wins and loses you finally won this session.

Bit late in commenting here, but as always the king of NMF impresses with the oleos! Nice save on the numbers and balkenkreuze too. I think if you should re-visit the use of kit number decals some liquid decal could save the integrity of the number - just add a bit on the decal-sheet and cut out close to the number and you have a decal with a nice sheet of clear transfer on top of the number.

Regarding stencils I think you may be right - late war, fieldpaint and all and the stencils would be kept at an absolute minimum - perhaps the oil-tank triangle on the nose too, but that is about it.

I really like this one, and it is indeed on my to-do list too, perhaps number 44? But that is for another day / year. . .

Here's a quick update on this one.

I sprayed the spinner backing plate using RLM 76. However it's not highly visible because of the color of the plastic. The propeller blades will get painted RLM 70 soon.

I also painted the actual spinner white, then came back with a brush and carefully hand painted on the "spiral schnauze" using Black. Here it is temporarily positioned to take the picture.

Here's a close up / enlargement of one of the original photos I found online. There's a lot of good information visible here. I don't see the "Oil triangle" visible here. The spinner backing plate appears to be the same color as the rest of the airframe, RLM 76.

One more thing that "could" be possible here. If you look at the overall color of the lower engine cover / radiator housing. It is in the shade and not in the direct sunlight. Please keep this in mind. Some say it's a fools errand to try and determine the correct colors using photos that are black and white. Could be, but it's also part of the fun too. 😉

Does it look as if it could possibly be Yellow ? Or do you see overall RLM 76 with dirt, oil, and grime on it ? I would really appreciate your thoughts about this.

Also, this 109 has a fairly wide based white stripe on the spinner. Some of these aircraft had thinner ones, while others were more wide like this one is. Most of the time these were painted on by hand, so mine looks fairly close to how it did on the real plane. It's not perfect by any means.

Here's a picture showing the painted spinner in a similar pose to how it looks in the previous enlarged photo.

Please look again at the lower engine cover / radiator housing. Here again, we have a picture taken with the sun almost directly overhead, casting a shadow here. It looks darker than the rest of the airframe. Here again I'm asking you guys, do you think it could be painted Yellow" ? Or is it simply in a shadow, or possibly even just dirty with grease, oil, coolant grime on it ?

Also it looks as if this aircraft "might" have had the inboard upper flap section replaced using one from another 109. It appears darker than the rest of the airframe, possibly even touched up a little along the outer edge where it is next to the aileron.

What are your thoughts here ?

Here's two different pictures I enlarged that show most of the Port side. I don't see any other markings here, but then again the original was a bit grainy and these details might simply have been lost. I did notice some wear in the paint on the back sides of the propeller blades, at the base and even more present at the tips. It could possibly be paint erosion from being operated on a dusty airfield.

This final photo shows how I have carefully drilled out and filed one of the 4 small scoops that were present on the nose, two per side. So far, so good. One down, and three more to go. Wish me luck !

As always, comments are encouraged. Thanks for stopping by.

You made some good progress, Louis @lgardner. The handpainting at this scale is excellent indeed.

WOW - good job Louis! Opening the cowl vents is a serious undertaking, and usually it is my experience that some filler is needed too to make the base flat again - good luck by the way 🙂
Regarding the color on the lower part of the nose, I personally think it is safe to say they were all 76, as white would be hard to see anyway, and they were after all field painted. That also explains the base of the spinner and blade - overspray from field paint, the tip of the spinner being easy to remove, the baseplate needing the propeller to be removed, a large undertaking in the open under constant threat of enemy action. The tip of the blade is indeed corrosion/sand and stone wear as is often seen on 109's in hard use actually - african examples often seen almost with all the backside paint worn off.
The radiator flap certainly look to be one salvaged from another plane, with the edge repainted before it is installed.

Inspirational work @lgardner!

Spiros, @fiveten
John, @johnb
Erik, @airbum
Things are finally returning back to normal in our location after Hurricane Ian went through here. We had our internet and TV services restored late yesterday afternoon, and the electricity was turned back on the day before, also late in the afternoon. I did manage to get some more work done on this one. I was not able to use my air brush, so I limited my work to things where it was not required.

Thank you for the feedback on the lower engine cover / radiator. I think you are correct in that it was painted in RLM 76. So I left it that way. I also did some minor air brush work just prior to our power outage. Please stay tuned for another update. This one is almost done now, and should be in the headlines section soon.