A friend from our local model club had recently started a Ju-188 in 1/48 scale, and I decided to join him with an Italeri 1/72 rendition. I waited for MONTHS for the decals to come in from somewhere in the former USSR (not sure which country - don't remember now). They finally arrived just as I was finishing up those last two Phantoms, the paint was drying on the Fiesler 167, and am waiting for decals on the Sonia - so I cracked the box on this:
Not really a high-parts-count model, so I thought it would be a "quick build," but once I saw the cockpit detail (absolutely none), I realized it would take a bit longer than anticipated. I spent about a week scratchbuilding all the detail in the cockpit, including cutting up the existing cockpit floor section, using a few spare parts from the spares box, and mostly various forms of styrene (sheet, strips, etc.) and some soldering wire for the tubes on the port side.
The pics below show three stages: as existed out of the box (sans seats), what I did with styrene and components, and then the whole thing painted up (though not yet fully weathered).
I realized that I will still need to add some structure to attached the nose gun, as the way Italeri would have you mount it is to attached it to the nose piece of the canopy - not gonna do that. I'll also add some detailing to three guns/gun mounts - mostly the shell ejector tubes.
By the way, I did realize the control column was too high, and cut it down after I took these pics.
I also decided to sand off the raised detail and re-scribe the panel lines, and add the few rivet sections.
18 additional images. Click to enlarge.
