Here's a look at Dragon's latest Ta 152C - the proposed 'C-1/R14 Torpedoflugzeug.

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If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

The sharpness of the wing leading edge at the wingtips is a major and typical missed issue on all 190 kits, even the superior 1/48th Hasegawas: The FW-190A wingtips had a noticeable "washout" near the wing tips which makes this sharpness issue there quite significant...

Note the Dragon blown canopy is awful, as are all the others 190 blown canopies out there, including even those of Squadron/Falcon, mere copies of the intended kit parts... The lone exception of all those being the newer Hasegawa 1/48th kits, but with no depicted "flex" for the open canopy position...

The Hasegawa windshield is a trifle narrower than Dragon, which is accurate, and unique among all the other kits which get this part hugely too wide (20% plus, except Dragon which are more like 5-8% too wide).

Any radiator and wing plan accuracy issues? I heard the Fusion resin conversion was the only one to depict the C wing accurately... A rather interesting what if in-service model would hopefully make the issue a little moot, but not for the more universal canopy and wingtip shape...

Gaston

I have built the Dragon Ta 152C kit that was released last year and besides the incorrect radiator the wings were the biggest problem...the leading edge of the wings are blunt and don't have a very good airfoil shape, also the ailerons are way too narrow.
The canopy was not that bad (compared to the Eduard kits) and I filled in the notches with putty and used it with no problems.
Some may have problems cutting off the old nose and grafting on the new one, there is not a very positive indication as to exactly where you should make the cut. When Dragon announced they were going to produce a Ta 152C kit that was new tooling I expected an all new kit, what they actually provide is nothing more that a conversion of their older Ta 152H kit.
When I can afford one of these new Ta 152C-1/R14 kits I would like to get one of them, I really like this subject and also want to see how much they improved the radiator from the older kit.

Matrixone

Hi there

The wings match original drawings pretty well for outline, but as Les says the shape of the ailerons (and flaps) and the airfoil are a problem. Doing a little more prep work on the kit last night, I found another oddity - the spar sits too far back in the wheel-well. At a guess, it needs to come forward about 2mm.

Comparing photos of the full-sized bulged canopies on the Fw 190 and Ta 152C shows they aren't quite the same - that of the Ta 152 having a slightly rounded frame-line at the lower front edge. The new kit includes both, but the one taken from Dragon's Fw 190 kits is MUCH clearer in the sample kit. The one from the Ta 152H is also beginning to show signs of mould wear, and even polished up I don't think it will be on a par with the Fw 190-style version. The frameline on the Fw 190 kit canopy is very light, so I think careful masking should hide the small discepancy well enough.

Time permitting, I'll post some pics as I play with the kit.

All the best

Rowan

Rowan,
You found out the other problem with this kit...the wing spar location is wrong in the instructions. When I built my kit last year I did a lot of dry fitting and decided to ignore the instructions and glued the wing spar more forward.

Thats nice that this new Ta 152C-1/R14 kit provides two canopies, the Ta 152C-0 kit only provided the canopy for the Ta 152H.

Below is my Dragon Ta 152C-0 built straight from the box except for the markings.


Matrixone