Hasegawa 1/32 Fw 190D-9 Black One

[Thunnus]

Hello LSP'ers!  My name is John and I'd like to share this Dora that I am currently working on.  I'm pretty far along on this build as I've been on it since April.  My original intention was to share it here on RFI after it was complete as I've done with two other of my builds but I thought I'd creep over to the WIP side of things now to share some of the work I've done and quickly catch up to where I'm at currently.  So, if I appear to be working REALLY fast, it is because I am simply reporting on stuff that has happened months ago.  I hope this is ok with everyone.

 

My subject is Hans Dortenmann's famous Yellow Tail, Black 1.  As one of the more colorful and well-known Doras of the war, it is a popular subject and there are some exquisite builds online that I've seen and will be drawing inspiration from.  Hopefully, I'll be adding something new and interesting as well.  I'm including an assortment of aftermarket stuff to the proceedings including the Eagle Editions cockpit and radiator cowling, Quickboost A-series wing guns, HGW fabric harnesses, Montex masks for the big markings, Eagle Cal decals for the stencils and Henri Daehne's beautiful VS-111 spinner and prop assembly.  My primary source of information will be Jerry Crandall's wonderful two-volume master reference of all things Dora.  Ignore that Big Tail Dora kit in the upper left corner... that'll be a different build and has nothing to do with this one.

 

 

Before jumping into the actual construction order, there are a few niggling things about the Hasegawa kit that I was aware of having built it once before, that I wanted to address first.  For example, the curvature of the kit's gun cowling seems to be exaggerated and is in need of reduction surgery.  I have a Eagle Editions 5-piece gun cowling that is more accurate but unfortunately, my example is slightly warped and a bit undersized.  Instead of trying to wrestle that piece of resin into shape, I used it as a model to modify the kit piece, which fits perfectly.

 

 

The primary goal of the modification was to tone down the curvature of the bulges between the two gun housings.

 

 

I used White Milliput for the majority of the fill and then Mr Surfacer 1000 as a finishing putty to smooth everything out.  Note that I have removed the circular flare on the bottom edge of the cowling and added a small circular bulge on the side near the rear according to Mr. Crandall's description of Dortenmann's machine.

 

 

 

Rivets were added using Radu's Rivet-R Mini version.

 

 

Jumping over to the wing guns, I wanted to replace those blobby leather boots with the more finite metal versions.  The Quickboost A-series resin gun replacements fit the bill but unfortunately we run into some warpage issues again.

 

 

 

No problem... we'll just replace the warped resin barrels with brass tube.  I probably would've gone this route even if the resin wasn't warped.

 

 

 

The kit exhaust stubs are very nicely represented and are designed so that they can be attached AFTER all of the painting is finished, which I love but the ends are not hollow.  A simple but tedious procedure to hollow out the ends using a sharp X-Acto blade.

 

 

To Be Continued...

[Martinnfb]

exceptional work !

[Thunnus]

Thank you Martin!  You were the person that led me to the decision to modify the gun boots.  I'm glad because I didn't like the look of those lumpy coverings on the kit guns. 

 

Ok... jumping into the meat of this build, we started with the cockpit.  I am replacing the kit cockpit, which is not bad, with the resin replacement by Eagle Editions.  Obviously, the advantage of detail and fidelity goes to the resin but the trade-off is the work required to make the resin parts fit.  Also, the view into the cockpit will be limited by the time it is buttoned up between the fuselage sides.  The resin set is not a drop-in replacement and requires some surgery to make it fit, including removal of molded detail on the insides of the fuselage parts and thinning of the fuselage walls.

 

 

The resin includes a replacement for the coaming above the instrument panel so a lot of dry-fitting, trimming and more dry-fitting is recommended to make sure that everything closes up when it is time to glue the fuselage sides together.

 

 

 

 

 

Once the the dry-fitting of the resin cockpit is found to be acceptable, we can move on to painting of the cockpit.

 

 

I've used the instrument dials from Airscale and have added instrument bezels punched from clear sheet of acetate.

 

 

 

 

The Revi gunsight with reflector glass cut from clear acetate.

 

 

The resin throttle body was miscast so I did some cut and paste with plastic sprue.

 

 

The HGW fabric belts are added.  I tried to weather them by scuffing them lightly with colored pencils.

 

 

Edited October 27, 2017 by Thunnus

[Grissom]

Lovely work, Thunnus.   Clearly you have plenty of patience and an eye for detail.   I know you've lashed out and bought quite a few after-market goodies for your kit but this is a classic example of how you can save yourself some money by modifying kit parts and achieving a great result.

[Scale32]

Love the Dora, one my favourite Luftwaffe aircraft and you've done it justice so far. I also used the Eagle Editions cockpit and do remember it being a lot of work to get it to fit snuggly but the trade off in detail is second to none. The mod to the kit gun cowl looks great and in my humble opinion look better than the resin cowl which seems to suffer from not so crisp panel lines.

 

Great work so far.

 

Cheers Bevan

[Gazzas]

Some great work!  Really impressive detail in the cockpit.  I have to say it annoys me that some of your AM purchases were were either warped or too small.  I mean...WTF??

[LSP_Kevin]

This is some really impressive work, John!

 

Kev

[Thunnus]

Thanks for the great comments!  I appreciate it.  The D-9 is one of my favorite aircraft and I think that has made difference in terms of how much passion, energy and time that I throw into a project.  I am recent returnee to the hobby and have been at this for about four years now since a long absence.  I am amazed at how much aftermarket stuff is available and so I've been like a kid in the candy shop, buying this and trying that.  I think I've used enough aftermarket stuff to realize that there are trade-offs to everything.  The resin market seems to populated with small one-man operations, which I think is pretty cool in its own way, but the downside is that the manufacturing consistency isn't as dialed in as a bigger company.  Shrinkage and warping of parts, from my newbie perspective, seems to be quite common.

 

On with the build... I've used some brass rod to add some rigidity/strength to the Eagle Editions D-9 tail wheel assembly.

 

 

I've dolled up the tail wheel itself with some white sidewalls to give it some visual interest. 

 

 

I intended to rivet the entire surface of the aircraft but riveting can be a tedious exercise, carefully transferring the rivet lines onto the model using the appropriate drawings and then using the Rivet-R Mini to trace over the drawn lines.  So I stretched the riveting over a period of time, starting with the tail and then doing the main fuselage, jumping to other things in-between.

 

 

 

 

I utilized the kit cowl gun barrels which, are easily hollowed out using a sharp X-Acto blade.

 

 

I hollowed out the ammo chute openings in the bottom of the wing and fabricated hollow chutes out of brass sheet using a piece of sheet styrene as a form.

 

 

 

 

I opened up the opening to the boarding ladder, another small touch. Hopefully all of these small things add up in the end.

 

 

 

The fit on this Hasegawa kit was typically very tight.  One of the few exceptions was the underwing panels, which need a bit of White Milliput.

 

 

One of my big focuses on this build was the engine plug area.  Hasegawa provides an elementary representation of the back of the Jumo engine that can be seen through the wheel well of the Dora.  While the kit-supplied pieces are a good start, the area really needs to be busied up to look the part.  Scratch-building isn't really my forte so I did a lot of deliberating/procrastinating/working-on-everything-else-but-the-engine-plug before I finally worked up the resolve to DO IT.  I've added a few little details and put lots of holes in the faux bulkheads to accept additional wiring.

 

[dodgem37]

Great show, John.  Nice detailing.  Love what you are doing.

 

Sincerely,

Mark

[alaninaustria]

Really nice work mate!

Cheers

Alan

[Thunnus]

Thanks gents!  Continuing on with the engine plug... the parts are painted and then dry-fit without glue to start figuring out where I'm going to add wires.

 

 

 

I start to add wires into the holes I've drilled.  Since this area is "constrained" by bulkheads fore and aft and the fuselage on both sides, the lengths of the wire runs needs to be considered as they are placed.

 

 

The engine plug parts are glued together only when the wiring runs are established.

 

 

I've used different gauges of wiring including 0.015", 0.020" and 0.030" lead wire and some guitar string as well.

 

 

 

Here is the perspective that represents the likely view into the engine plug area through the wheel wells.  You can see a few more holes in the bulkheads that I need to fill with wires.

 

 

A few more wires and the engine plug assembly is finished.

 

 

Some dry-fitting to check the view/fit of the engine plug assembly.  You can see some prominent ejector pin discs in the wheel well that have been filled with putty... one of the rare flaws in this Hasegawa molding.

 

 

 

The wheel wells have been painted.  Nothing added here just painting and a pastel wash to dirty it up a bit.

 

 

Dry-fitting the painted wheel to see how it looks with the finished engine plug.

 

 

 

Like the cockpit, a lot of the detail of the engine plug is obscured once the exterior panels are in place.

 

 

 

[Gazzas]

Those wheel wells look boss!  Like the yellow line was laid in, not painted.

 

Good stuff!

 

Gaz

[LSP_Kevin]

Beautiful!

 

Kev

[TorbenD]

Cracking! Eye candy of the highest order...

 

Torben

[Thunnus]

Thanks for the comments guys!  Barreling on with the condensed version of this build...

 

I finally work up enough nerve to tackle the largest riveting job... the lower wing.

 

 

I run my Rivet-R freehand over my drawn lines.  As a wheel, it tracks very true but sometimes it goes astray when the focus lapses, especially around curved surfaces.  So there are some necessary repairs.

 

 

Instead of using the somewhat flimsy brass deck from the Eagle Editions cockpit set, I cut the deck from the kit part and use that instead.

 

 

 

The upper wings are also riveted.

 

 

Circular rivets along the leading edge are added using a jewelry beading tool.

 

 

The Henri Daehne prop set is prepared for assembly.  Very high quality stuff and comes with an exacting set of instructions.

 

 

The prop hub detail is so pretty, I'm hesitant on hiding it with the spinner.

 

 

Dry-fitting the H-D prop to see how it looks mounted and spinner in place.

 

 

Some small details... a strip from a soda can was used to fashion a new loop antenna.  Wire, stretched sprue and brass rod to make up the assorted antennae.

 

 

 

 

The fuselage halves + the gun cowling + the resin coaming + rear decking have been put into place.

 

 

 

The wheels have been painted and dirtied up.