Hi, some words before, i intended a build log about this little kit, but was unable to load up pictures, thankfully Martin solved this, but in the meantime there is much progress done.
The pictures and text are up to the current stadium of this fun-to-build-one, i hope you like
it anyway. This report contains also a lot of pictures from the parts/sprues and the decals,
beside the relative heavy panel line i was impressed about the kit and it is a pleasure to build.
For weeks I was absent from the hobby, dusting off my workbench I found my
projects, but before proceeding on them I needed something easy to start.
since Airfix started a new line of products, I was interested in them. Easy to
build with some great engineering and quality decals, the Focke Wulf was the one.
Comparing the kit parts with photos and plans, I would say Airfix has done a good job
with this kit. The panel lines are too deep for my taste, the kit has a good cockpit
and great detailed wheel wells. The clear parts are well above the RoG parts, in
the end it went immediately on my bench.
The first step was to clean the parts in warm soapy water. Construction was straight
forward, there are no real problems, the two fuselage parts are warped, but the
plastic is very soft. The instrument panel can be detailed with a decal for the instruments,
The instrument panel sits to far forward, I changed this, as seen in the pictures.
Eduard produces a PE-set for this kit, but it doubles the the price for the kit, in the end, after The fuselage is closed, only the seat is visible. The instructions are very clear and I followed them, after the main construction was done I had to fill some gaps, because I glued the parts to fast together ( bad habits die hard).
The plastic gun barrels and the pitot looked too clumsy so I purchased a metal set from
Master, You can see in the pics, that they are open on the front !
After the main construction was done, I primed the little kit with a dark gray paint, Humbrol
No.32 acrylic. The outcome was a bit too rough, so I sanded the paint, in the end the whole
paint disappeared, hmm until that point I thought my wash was successful. But the paint
stayed in the panel lines and this was a good thing !
For the factory applied three tone camo in the RLM shades 74/75/76 I mixed acrylic
paints from Revell and Humbrol together and applied them with my Badger 150.
It was the first try with blue tack to get the camo edges right, it worked not so good
and in the end I sprayed the colors freehand. But this experience will be helpful on
later RAF camos. The color scheme was redone after the masks are off, because
of the wrong contrast for the upper colors.
For the markings I purchased a decal sheet from Sky Models for a JG 5 aircraft, but they
arrived too late, so I did the kit markings for a plane from the Jagdgruppe 10 with the
snake on the sides. This unit belongs to the Luftwaffe testcenter in Rechlin in fall
1944, i did not find much pictures of this aircraft, it can be true, that it was an aircraft
equipped with rocket launchers. The only photo shows the pilots before the fuselage
and it can be seen, that the sides of the aircraft are resprayed with large dapples of
a dark color, maybe RLM 74.
The kit-decals worked great, printed by Cartograf, they have minimal carrier film and
react great wit Sol.
So much for this, more will come in the next time, one of the most evil things, mankind
ever developed is this "entf" button on the keyboard,grmmmph
Bernd
