Paul2660

So far I have found the Quinta studio belts to be excellent. I wish they would just release the belts in a series so you don’t have to purchase the entire cockpit instrument set. I also tried the HGW belts but all the work to get the various buckles on correctly just did not work well for me. The Eduard belts that are PE tend to be too stiff and the paint comes off once you attempt a bend. Paul

Border makes excellent plastic but their instructions suffer and so far in my build history they’re decals. I just rush they would spend more time proof reading their instructions and add more verbiage. Paul

I am still surprised no one has come out with an after market correction for the nose issue. With 3D printing taking over the after market it should not be that hard just a big print job. The corrections for the A-26 Invaider are many and some quite extensive. Paul

Just to make sure it’s clear, the original A-4 was available in many places after the pre-orders started to ship. At least in the US. Special order or not. It’s still available here. ZM/VOLKS sold this kit the same way. Special order period then no more orders and showed sold out on their site. Within a week after VOLKS shipped out pre-orders the kit was available at 3 major US hobby outlets. https://spruebrothers.com/zkmk31808-1-32-zoukei-mura-focke-wulf-fw190a-4/ Paul

Good to know it's coming, would be great if they could make one without the engine. Also if like all other releases, (at least for the US), no need to pre-order as the US distributors I am sure will have plenty. Pre-order gets you maybe 3 weeks earlier, and cash is taken at order. Paul C

Testers ELO works well. Scalecoat was the best but appears to be no longer made. AK Interactive also has a similar product in their line up. Paul

I would welcome Eduard moving up to more 1/32, especially if they leave out the engine. Their latest 109, the K is excellent. They have gotten great reviews on their Wildcats, and Zeros, both on fit and engaging. As I understand it, they had an early series of the 109, which did have issues, and was not as well engaged as their later ones. Not sure where they made the change, but I have most of the G6 and G10 versions and they are all well engaged. Same goes for the FW-190 as again somewhere in the series they changed out the molds and added much more engaging, and rivet details. You can see this clearly on the D9 kits, very nice. As much as I love ZM and their kits, they offer a lot of fit problems since they design the kits to have open or closed engine cowls. The Do-335 I am just finishing was a trying problem with the front engine cowl, (flaps open). And the main covers did not go on easily either, showing considerable gaps that I had to work on since I wanted one side closed. The FW-190 was great until I got to the Engine covers. Getting all the various single parts to line up without gapping was hard to do and I am still not totally happy with the outcome. 2 bottom, 2 middle, 2 top, plus the top center. Leaving all of these open is great, but also adds a lot of more trouble with painting. The engine on the kit is beautiful sans wiring (not sure why they can't add the wiring as they do on the non radial engines), but the engine has to be put in just right, and aligned perfectly to get the covers to fit. After painting I had some issues. After all of that if you want the kit closed up, all the engine work will never been seen. So, long story short, with modern design, I would welcome a new 1/32 on the market from Eduard, hopefully without an engine. Paul C

You might reach out to Graham at Iconicair. He made a set of the longer wing tips you are looking for the B2 version or the recon version. Both are suggested in the Monogram book on the 335 and shown in drawings but I don’t believe they were ever made. His wing tips matched the fit of the HK B2 perfectly. His work is excellent and he matched the rivet pattern from the kit perfectly. He graciously made my set as a one off and he might make another if he still has the patterns. Paul

Can’t answer first question. But the British sky type S would refer to a late war variant of RLM76. Used on many late44 and 45 aircraft. D9 blue 12 is one of more famous ones. AK interactive had a nice version of this they call it RLM76 vr 3 late war variant. Both in lacquer and acrylic. MRP also has it, I will have to look up their paint number. Paul

One way to help keep them at the best strength is store them in the freezer once opened. Paul

Just wanted to pass this on. I picked up on this product on this site and tried a bottle. Best CA I have ever used. Coming from BSI and similar products. This glue works instantly which is what I want with CA. NO need for kicker. Works great on resin and plastic. Just as important is the bottle design. They have the best bottle I ever used. Lid has a metal needle in the top to allow the opening to never clog. Well thought out i.e. a better mousetrap. Only downside is having to purchase direct from VMS which is overseas and thus takes more time and cost to ship. Note they have quite a few interesting products besides glue. Paul

Just curious, is it all black plastic or green, black and silver? You have the slipstream edition where ZM tied the plane to a anime character. But you get the drop tank also. Not sure if the Ta-152 ever had one fitted but it’s a nice tank with all the fittings. Slipstream came out after the original H1. I believe the H1 non slipstream used tan plastic where the slipstream edition used green. but still had the silver and black. Paul

The H0 is an improvement over the H1 as several parts were modified or changed. Namely the Engine block was change to fully cover the cam covers as on the H1 they are open on the back end. There might be a slight better fit but I did not see much difference overall. Issues I ran into that you would want to really dry fit first. It's also not in the terrible multicolored plastic. However if you want to build the H1 it's still your only option. However I believe you could add the H1 wing to the H0 to have an overall H1. The wing is standard plastic, not the crappy silver they use for most of the engine and wing spar. Edit: You cannot use the main wing flaps interchangeably between the H1 kit and H0 kit. ZM inexplicably moved the main attachment point on the main flaps. This is if you wish to leave them open. I would recommend mounting the engine to the fuselage before you add the wing. You cannot easily get to the lower attachment points on the engine supports where they attach to the firewall. They are basically blocked by the wing. This attachment is critical to getting everything to line up correctly later on. The mount of the 30mm motor cannon to the engine block and frame. I have never really gotten this to fit just right on several different builds. The mounting of the main instrument panel to the cockpit. There is very little material to glue to here and the fit has to be just right or the side walls won't come together correctly. If you use the ZM Photoetch cockpit (Eduard) instrument replacements, I found that it made fitting everything together harder as the photo etch edges can slightly stick out to far and again cause the side walls not to fit snug. Trying to grind down the edges can lead to disaster as the parts will just pop off. The Quinta Studios set works much much better and has a better color. The ZM set looks purple on the kit against normal RLM66. The Yahu instrument panel is very thick and IMO since it's in one piece has to be cut to fit. I never got this to work and had to replace the part. The cockpit is by far IMO one of the hardest since areas to get right at least for me. By comparison the FW-190 A4 cockpit goes together like a dream. You have to attach the exhausts to the engine before you add the engine cover panels. Especially a problem if you are not going to have one of them open for display so the exhausts have to be covered before you paint the kit. The attachment of the outer cowling to the cowling flaps can be tricky, I recommend attaching the separate top piece first as that sets the correct spacing. The Radiator into the the outer cowling is IMO a mess and once the radiator has snapped into place you will have a hard time getting it back out i.e. if you test fit it. The separate parts of the wings can be made to fit with very small gaps, but I used a different process, adding G7 to G5 first, setting the correct gap then adding that to the lower wing surface already attached to the spar. I found that putting all the wing components together first then attaching E19 last is easier (at least for me). This is one of the most critical parts of the wing, and it can lead wing root misalignment if not assembled correctly. Also again make sure there is no paint on the leading edges of the wing root and E19 when you paint the wheel wells. I screwed up here on my first build and tried to assemble said parts with silver paint on them, never got a good solid glue bond and had to re-glue multiple times which just made a mess. The wing spar is very critical to overall fit, I made the mistake of painting all of it the first time, and you really only need to paint the front and maybe the rear. Paint on the part makes it hard to get a solid glue bond. Main landing gear is unique in design and I find it's still difficult to get the parts to fit, but they will eventually. The ZM concept note has some good pictures of how to get the legs in correctly. Note on the new FW-190 A4, landing gear has to be on during painting due to the way the wing panel that covers the legs is attached. Attachment of the main gear covers to the landing get, again I would mask the areas where the parts are joined (what I mess if you paint the entire parts and try to get glue to hold all of it together. Also I never could figure out the brake lines that they have and IMO they are way too large and thus get the way of the gear cover I ended up not using them. If you are going to display one or both of the engine covers open, there are not any support posts in the kit to hold the part open, so that is a scratch build. ZM's decals for then H1 and H0 are IMO not that good the white crosses especially. Consider getting one of the EagleCals sets of decals. I used the Eduard Spinner masks to get the white spirals as again the decals for this were not easy to work with. Also you need to apply the decal or paint the spiral before you complete the Propeller assembly. Paint the spiral or apply the decal first then put the two parts together. If you don't the propeller blades get in the way of masking or the decals for a spiral. Overall the kit will build up to a nice looking TA-152. The H0 doesn't have the multicolored plastic of the H1. The H1's silver parts IMO don't take to glue well at all and also have trouble with painting. H0 is all one color. I also wish that ZM would add rivets to their kits. I have send pictures on this site and others where the modeler has added rivets and it looks to me so much more pleasing to the eye. However doing this is not my cup of tea, as one mistake and there goes a part out the door. Paul C

+ 1 on the instructions. Border could learn a lot from a set of ZM instructions. Paul

AS-4 is their equivalent to RLM75 grey-violet AS-3 is their equivalent to RLM74 grey-green AS-5 is their equivalent to RLM76 (it appears from the cap to be the early version of 76, which did not have a blue a tint. RLM76 vr1 almost a light grey/white RLM76 vr2 very light blue RLM76 vr3 very similar to RAF sky AK interactive has a very nice publication on the WWII colors which their real colors series of paints are based on. Paul

As aftermarket goes for the Border kits I have seen only masks for canopies and cockpit interiors. No decal options. Borders decals at least with the Ju-87 and Bf-109 are semi transparent especially the whites. Has anyone seen aftermarket decals for any of the 1/35 offerings? I had hoped Eagle editions would venture there. Paul

And never one Spad. Paul

Based on the CAD, it looks like a beautiful kit. I sure hope that border has done a better job on both their instructions and their decals. So far I have found numerous errors on both Ju87 and BF 109 G6 kit. The BF 109 G6 had multiple errors and drawings that were misleading. After working on a couple of ZM kits and using their instructions you do get spoiled as they have the by far the best instructions I have ever used. So far on all the border kits, I have built the instructions have very little verbiage and use pictures only. Many times the pictures are drawn at an angle or such that it’s hard to understand where the part you’re trying to place goes. As a Kudo to border kits so far, all have gone together extremely well however, since no one‘s making aftermarket decals you’re stuck using the decals that come with the kids and they are subpar, and that they are transparent. Paul

If you are building this kit, you may have already found this out. Part C19, which is the main floor for the cockpit area and behind is "bent" or warped as it comes in the kit. The front of the part is bent down slightly. When you attempt to fit the part to the sidewalls you will find that the fit is off due to the portion of the part that is bend slightly down. Due to the design of the kit the fit of the sidewalls is IMO critical to the overall appearance and fit and finish. There is a long slot on each part of the main sidewalls where C19 is supposed to go and that slot is straight not bent forwards at the front. I did not catch this on my current build and thus am having to figure out a way to build it so I can get good glue fit around the front sides of C19. It would have been easy enough to put the part in warm/hot water and bend it back to straight, however now with all the various cockpit parts glued in and painted its too late for that on this kit. Dry fitting C19 to the right sidewall, the back fits perfectly, front is off just a bit so when gluing this pay particular attention to the fit. It's similar to the Ta-152 design which also IMO had some fit issues. Just wanted to pass this on as the fix is very easy if done before you start building the cockpit. Paul

ZM appears to give two ways to display the cowlings over the engine, either both open or closed. I don't want to have them permanently open, but would like to take them off to show the engine at times. My question, has anyone glued the two halves to the center hinge piece and then just fit them down over the engine? But not gluing them to the sides of the fuselage. Thus you could pull both off together to show the engine. I realize this is not how it worked with the real aircraft, but I don't want to have them open all the time. ZM's method for displaying open seems to have you glue the cowlings up. It seems you could also cut just one set of the uprights on part H8, and glue one side closed and have the other permanently open. Being able to have them stay closed over the engine during painting is a plus also. Thanks Paul

Thanks for the replies. I will use the micro scale products next time. Paul

I am slowing finishing the HK Do-335 B2. I ran into a problem with the large underwing black cross decals I have never had before. I was using Mr Mark Softener. What occurred was after applying the solution to the face of the decal the solution actually melted parts of the cross, or better described as melted the decal. I have used the micro sol/set products which are a two part process but only used the Mr Mark Softener without the Mr Mark setter. What are others using on HK decals with better success. Thanks Paul

Thanks for this. I have the Horton book and will look this up. Paul

Thanks for the info. It’s strange however that on the Old man blog one of the entries shows their DO-335 built up with one half left clear and the clear is transparent not frosted. So ZM did make a version that was clear. Link is below: https://www.zoukeimura.co.jp/en/sentiment/oyajiblog_082.html This is similar to the pictures in the concept note book on the Ta-152 as they have a clear fuselage shown there also. Not frosted. Paul

I just started on this kit never having open the box until a couple of nights ago. I’ve looked on the old man blog numerous times and there are pictures of this kit with clear plastic that is see-through. In the box the clear plastic is all frosted. I guess my question is why make a kit with clear plastic that’s not clear. If you try to display it everything’s blurred, it’s kind of pointless. The clear plastic obviously adds to the complexity of the build because it’s brittle not to mention the fact that there are so many ejection pin marks, on all the wings in flaps, etc.. I wanted to ask if anyone got one of these kits early that was pure clear and not frosted. If you read in the old man blog, there’s pictures of the kit where is pure clear and you can see through everything and when you go to the build log, it’s frosted plastic so they obviously switched designs. I am interested in other peoples opinions on this because to me that plays pointless to use frosted clear plastic it it’s kind of defeats the purpose. Thanks Paul