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Bf 109 F-4 Priller

Introduction

As I'm going to build a Bf109 in Swiss markings I wanted to try out the cockpit sets from Aires and Eduard. And practise painting and decaling. So I found one of my favourite Bf109 in the net as Priller special edition with figure and I bought the corresponding Aires cockpit set.

Riveting

To rivet or not is always a question with many oppinions. Riveting makes an airplane much more charming in my oppinion. Searching for some plans with rivets depicted is always difficult for me, but after thorough seach I found a corresponding one. I use a riveting tool from umm-usa and it works very well for me. Armed with a calipper, Dymo tape, a pencil I had some hours of work in front of me. But once finished I was hoping it'll turn out nice.

Cockpit

The build began with the Aires cockpit and it is really well casted, but to fit, it requires much sanding. Painting was done with Tamiya and Vallejo acrylics. The Hasegawa fit is great. I encountered some gaps while building but I think it was my fault. So putty and sanding was needed also to close some panels to get an F-4. But I'm not sure to got it 100% to an F-4 in the end.

Painting

After completing the building phase, I prepared my Aztek airbrush and mixed Gunze RLM 65 and Tamiya grey and white, and sprayed the underside and both sides. Next I masked the upperside in preparation for the Gunze RLM 75 and RLM 76 splinter camouflage. I have used UHU "Patafix" (Blu-Tack) for the demarcation lines but wasn't happy with the result so I removed the Pattafix and finally finished the camouflage freehand. The mottling was done with alcohol dilluted base colors at low pressure. I wonder how other airbrushes would spray such a pattern, but I'm used to my Aztek. I post-shaded the panel lines and rivets a bit with a dilluted Tamiya black-brown alcohol mixture. After this I mixed the base colors with lighter beiges, grey and white from Tamiya and highlighted the corresponding colors to flexibely mask the pattern. If you're higlighting too much you can overspray it with a dilluted base color, but be careful, you'll loose some of the post-shading lines. The best example is the on the underside of the plane

Decaling

In many features the decaling process is described as very a little step in the building sequence of the model. But I always encountered difficulties while decaling, they one time even got destroyed by a setting solution. But the first time I've tried Micro-Set/Sol it was an easier step as in my previous builds. But before decaling I put some layers of Tamiya clear to seal before and after decaling. I just put a very dilluted black-brown mix over the decals.

Weathering and finishing

I tried to weather my build during the painting stage. But added Pro Modellers weathering wash which was very, very nice to use. For the landing gear and wheel wells I applied the wash too. A little bit of smoke was painted on the sides. Adding all the little bits and the aerial wire finished the build. At last I applied some pigments to the wheels. Et voilà...