Hi,

This´s my project for this campaign, the Tamiya Focke Wulf Fw-190 D9 1/48, with Aires and Eduard accesories,

Cool Danial , looking forward to your build on this one !

Nice progress Eetu , was there a gap on the other side as well ?

Hi,

@Eetu: Nice work on the Dora cowling (if only I'd thought of that ). The styrene to fill the wing gap is definitely the way to go.

@Daniel: Some nice after market goodies there. Should be a beauty when it's done.

Mike.

Thanks.

Yes, there was a gap on both sides. In this pic I just held the fuselage so that the gap was closed on the other side to better show the problem area.

Yikes ! that is a nasty gap .

Eetu, that's a 1/32 scale gap on a 1/72 scale model! But it's a nice looking model just the same.

Andrew

Eetu,

Can you spread the fuse with card stock in the vicinity of the wing root at all?

Cheers,
Fred

Yep, I was just coming to that.
As installing a spreader inside the fuselage could compromise the gluings of the cockpit components, I added shims made of styrene sheet to the seams. (scroll up to my previous posts to see a pic of the shims glued in place)
And here they are after trimmed and sanded, ready for the fuselage:

In my opinion these kind of gaps are the most pleasant to deal with. Certainly beats repeated puttying and sanding, having to watch for surrounding details.
Also notice the wing trailing edge rebuilt from strip styrene. Still to be added are those small rectangular plates attached over the wing root seam near the trailing edge. I think left-over PE would do fine for those.


The underside's about ready as well:

As the PE flaps were narrower than the moulded-in details in the kit, I filled the resulting gaps with styrene sheet. Inaccurate, I admit, as the flaps extended up to the outermost panel line in the fuselage on later 190 variants. But it's less noticable than my attempts at scratchbuilding extensions to the PE flaps, so I went this way.


Just one bit of progress on the Dora this time.

Out of the box, the prop blades touched the front edge of the cowling, so I glued a piece of thin styrene sheet behind the spinner back plate to create a space. As fit of the prop axle was somewhat loose and I didn't want to glue it in place or attach it before painting (the kit has a "cup" to be glued to the end of the axle to hold the prop in place), I built a simple gagdet out of styrene tube and sheet to hold a suitable grommet swiped from a P-40 kit to hold the prop firmly and enable it to be rotated and removed if wanted.

Finally, looking like an airplane. Great success! High five!




While the fit between the fuselage and the wing was nearly flawless, I should have noticed how the fuselage underside portion of the wing has a bit thicker than the rear of the fuselage, resulting in a slight step between them. Time for some more milliput I think.


The supercharger intake had a locator pin that resulted in an ugly bump inside the scoop, so I glued some copper mesh to a slice of a styrene tube to make a part imitating a filter to blank the inside. The mesh is of course grossly overscale but it was the finest I had (not that I have that much of a selection though) and it won't be that visible in the finished model.


Stabilisers ready for gluing to the fuselage. Well, almost. There's those scratches to be taken care of.
After fiddling with the resin stabilisers it was obvious that attaching them would be a challenge with superglue, trying to get them on straight. After cleaning them up without comparing their locators with those in the kit, the mounting pegs were too small, resulting in a loose fit, back to front direction.
So, I decided to glue the plastic stabilisers to Aires' resin control surfaces. Cutting up and tidying the plastic parts plus filing the groove to accept the resin parts of course took its time but it's well worth the effort as now I can glue them on with styrene cement and have time to adjust their position.

Next time: taking care of the step in the rear fuselage plus modding the fuselage cannon cover as well as the resin rudder.

@Hermann and Mike. Great jobs on those FW 190s! They look really good.

Thanks for participating

Thanks Jesper!

@ Eetu: Hi, just wondering how thick those styrene shims you used to fill the wing root gaps are ..., thanks, the Dora's looking great by the way ...

Mike.

Thanks Jesper!!
My only regret was not noticing the campaign ealier .. I might have built a couple more butcher birds!! Anyway, I truely enjoyed the experience of my first campaign and looking forward to many more!!

I finally did it! I tricked Tomas to sign up and enlist, so now I'm teaching him to put pictures up. The evil of the twins is saved and finished!









Better than mine, I would say, considering the mayhem halfway, but don't tell him that when he's out here alone .

Tony (And Tomas, studying frantically)

Very nice!! I like the paint work and the weathering alot (definitely a build that anyone would be proud of). By the way, which kit is it?

Tomas:
Great work. That is one fine looking Butcher Bird . You don't see many 190s in RAF markings

Taylor

Hi all,

I just wanted to say how impressed I am by all the models presented in this campaign thread! Fantastic job guys!

Eetu, don't throw away the background (paperboard?) of your workbench... it's a piece of art!

Jean-Luc

Just newspaper spread over my workbench, taped down. I never thought it could pass as an example of modern abstract art, altough I admit noticing how all the paint smudges, taped over scalpel and all kinds of notes written across make it kind of artistic.
I can send it over when I change it the next I clean up my workbench, if we can come to an agreement on the price!


But on to this campaign entry of mine.
Now I got two 190s at the same stage of construction.

Note the styrene shim on both sides making a nice seam that doesn't require anymore filling at this point. The resin front fuselage piece fit nicely, although getting it to line up nicely required some care, as we see on the next pic -->


The fuselage halves are too close together OOB, so it was either a matter of adding a spreader of some sort inside the fuselage or gluing styrene sheet to make the resin piece spread the fuselage. I went with the latter, because this way the resin piece fit precisely withhardly any (if any at all) sloppiness in the fit, which is always nice when gluing things with CA. When the fuselage front pieces was in place, the wing subassembly lined up nicely with the nose fuselage sides and the resin part itself.

The tan pieces are the exhaust pipes which I made by cutting up and drilling out Academy sherman vehicle tool handles. Here's how they look from the outside.

The solid-moulded cooling gills were also modified by opening them wtih a bare metal panel scriber. I've been puzzled by this tool as it seems to be all too easy to accidentally make a line too wide and deep, so I haven't used for panel lines much. But for these kinds of things it really hits the spots.

Next: taking care of the seams and gluing on the stabilisers.
Stay tuned.

Almost done. Here a few progress pictures.





Taylor

Hi Taylor,

That's a fantastic looking Dora! The painting is first class...

Jean-Luc

Eetu , coming along really well can't wait to see the finished kit now !

Taylor , Jean-Luc is right .....Excellent job on the painting !!

Thanks! Much obliged.

I second the opinions already expressed, that Dora looks really fine, Taylor.
What scale was it again?

I've made a bit of progress on my 1:72 Dora. I fixed the hole in the instrument panel coaming with styrene sheet and attached the stabilisers and rudder. Now the majority of the plane is together, except for the intake scoop on the right side.

I still have to do some detailing on the engine cover as well, add a few bumps & lumps and scribe a couple of lines.


Here's photo from the left side prior to gluing the rudder in place, showing the modifications done to the rudder and the off-set stabilisers.

I pinned the rudder to make the assembly more robust (not that it's likely to be exposed to much stress, but it doesn't hurt either). Also notice the hinge slots partially filled to better match reference photos and drawings and the lower edge extended with some more styrene. Although the Aires set didn't specify which kit it's meant for, it apparently wasn't for this one, as the rudder was too short, requiring the aforementioned extension.
I hope I didn't mess up the contours of it too much while sanding the styrene sheet to shape.

Until next time then. Stay tuned.

I was wondering, and this isn't aimed at any current builds, but I notice many aircraft with "carbon" stains at the ammunition casing ejection ports under the plane. I would think that there wouldn't be any carbon stains since the explosion is taking place at another location. I can understand that maybe oil or other weathering from dust or a very small amount of carbon could be present at these locations since everything is moving to the rear either from the prop while idling or from the movement of air while flying. I have not been able to find many undercarriage photos of Fw190's online to see if this occurred during the War. I was just curious and was wondering if this actually happened or if people use it to add depth to the model.

Patrick, that is a good observation, but there is quite a bit of residual powder aka exhaust gasses from the cases when the are ejected that create the staining. I have some good pics of this (hard copies) I'll see if I can scan them and post them. I used to wonder the same thing, then started looking at the ejection port area on the Bradley I commanded and sure as s***, it was stained just as the ejection ports on the planes was. There usually isn't a whole lot of distance from where a shell is fed into the breech, and where it ejects, so staining can be quite common. I even noticed it on my ejection port on my M-16 rifle. Hope that helps. "Q"

Patrick , Matt has hit it right on the nail . There would be staining at the ejection ports . Some stand out more on different aircraft then others . Also depends on the modeller on how they want to dis pic the staining , age of the aircraft how offend it was at the front ...etc....etc.....

Hi Matt and Terri, I appreciate both of your comments. I was also in the military so I understand what you were saying about carbon on weapons Matt. I took some time last night and looked around and found some decent pics, including the plane you built Terri, and I could not find where there were distinguishable streaks. This included the ejection ports underneath and on the wing where the gun barrel projects through it. I found several wolfs from the Eastern front in whitewash which did not have any marks also. Some pics were not as clear and it looked like there may have been streaks. The planes look weathered and many have their props spinning so I am assuming that they had fired their guns at some point, especially on the Eastern front. Maybe I can post a couple of pics later today. Just so you both know--I am not arguing what you both have stated in regard to the markings and respect what you are saying. Its just that I have not seen a photo clearly demonstrating the "carbon", for lack of a better word, staining. Maybe its possible that some ground crews took care of their planes better than others and tried to keep them cleaner in respect to removing these marks? Is it also possible that some of the marks were created more by muddy water streaking back off of the chute opening during landing and takeoff?