1/24 Trumpeter Bf 109G-6 Late. Looooong term project.

[ade rowlands]

Next up for butchery after the Stuka debacle is this kit. Trumpeters’ attempt at a 109G-6. I am no expert on any airframe and it looks like a 109 to my eye, though no doubt there are inaccuracies along the way somewhere. What kit is perfect anyway? I think the kits major disappointment is the gear wells. There’s just no detail on the inner wheel wells at all, no canvas liner or lightening holes. I don’t know if I’m going to attempt a fix in there as that could be a road to ruin for me when I’d just like to get something through to completion. I have done a quick look over whilst up bagging the sprues and there are a lot of ejector pin marks to take care of, I mean a looooot, the cockpit floor looks like a piece of Swiss cheese, the cockpit walls not so bad but in need of care. That is where my initial days of work will be, which is fine as I’m still waiting on a few bits and pieces for the build to arrive, amongst them some 1/24 rudder pedals. I plan to do Hartman’s G-6 in Winter coat more or less as per the scheme in the box. The decals are printed by Cartograf and researched by Aeroscale so quite a good base to start from. The box scheme isn’t quite right from the 2 photos I have come across online. What I am not sure if is the White sprayed in a random blotchy pattern with the usual wear and tear or we this completely over sprayed in white and a grey random tiger stripe type pattern painted over that. I’m probably going to go with standard camo with blotchy white. The to do list for this includes scratchbuilding the battery box behind the head armour as one photo appears to show it there. Annoyingly the box art shows one in place but there’s no kit part. The radio aerial mast needs to be deleted and it’s hole in the canopy filled, a nice easy fix, plus Trumpeter give 2 sets of the clear sprues so I get a second chance should I make a mistake. I’ll be making use of my Silhouette cutter by scanning the decals to create masks for the major markings, the kit decals don’t provide the correct Black outlined low visibility Balkenkreuze for the upper wings,  it do have white ones for the other scheme in the box so an easy fix again hopefully. The Galland head armour also needs some work, Trumpeter moulded the glass armour part as a solid grey piece so that needs rectification one way or the other.

 

The kit

 

 

The bits and pieces.

 

 

 

And the reference photos taken from the Falkeins page, if they need to be pulled for copyright or whatever, feel free. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 14, 2018 by ade rowlands

[ade rowlands]

There hasn’t been a heck of a lot of progress to date, which wasn’t the plan as having most of this past week off work I planned to at the very least have the cockpit if not painted the. Ready for paint but it wasn’t to be. 

The kit cockpit floor, the Mad Riveter of Trumpeter clearly has a son in the injection pin department and he decided to open a whooooole new box of them back when this kit kit the moulds. 17 of the buggers. 17!

 

 

He didn’t end there, oh no, 4 more of the things here. 

 

 

You thought that was it? Ooooh no, 2 more.

 

 

Yes, that’s more of the little fellows in the cockpit halves. 

 

 

All needed to be filled and eliminated with extreme prejudice.

 

 

As you can see, each has a styrene disc punched out and glued in each pin hole. Trumpeter were at least kind enough to make them in sizes I had punches for. The rudder pedal parts moulded to the floor were removed as I knew I would damaging when sanding out the pin holes. I don know why Trumpeter moulded them as they did in 2 halves anyway. The detail taken out was then added to the parts Trumpeter would have you glue to the cockpit floor anyway. So nothing has been lost. 

 

 

Now came a decision. Sanding out the pin holes in the cockpit halves and not eliminating the kit details, some would be fine, some were in horrid places. Sooooooooo.....

 

 

Thats the Rubicon crossed then. Before blitzing it all away I measured each and every moulded detail in all dimensions and noted them on the instruction pages. Luckily they are all fairly uniform pieces that should be replaceable with standard styrene strip and rod, the relevant packs were duly ordered and I am awaiting their arrival before cracking in with the cockpit. 

All I’ve done so far other than this work is glue up the rudders, elevators and ailerons. Oh, and go through the kit to hunt out further ejection pin marks that may be visible later on. I found these. 

 

 

Of course, there’s another gear door and 3 more radiator doors to take care off. Again, Trumpeter were kind enough to match my punch sizes. The turbo intake is quite a large bore in this scale and the first hole in might be visible, so they will be tackled also. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ade rowlands]

 

The kit floor, back wall and seat pan as it is now with the rudder parts added. 

Once the Evergreen bits I’ve ordered arrive (oh and the RO Toolz mitre cutter I’ve been wanting to buy for a while but didn’t have a sure enough reason to splash the cash on) I’ll get on with the cockpit detailing, but I start my week on nights tomorrow so progress will be Glacial at best. 

[LSP_K2]

It's a fun kit to play with, and you've certainly got the right attitude. When finished, these big boys can be most impressive.

[ade rowlands]

Not really an update, more of a ‘I’m still here plodding along with the build’ post. I built up the flying surfaces having from the outset decided to not use the Trumpeter hinges as they seldom fit nicely in my case and can cause issues later on, it’s not just Trumpeter, I ignore the Tamiya ones too. On joint each half of each flying surface together I noticed a lot of the slots cut for the hinges didn’t match up and were off set anyway which made my decision more valid. I filed them all square and added some styrene rod to each with a fair bit of glue to melt the strip into the kit pieces nicely to fill gaps and let that set for a couple of days. Working night shifts all week I decided to take these parts in to work and work at them in the small hours of the morning so all parts were sanded, cleaned up and polished. The radiator doors, gear doors had the pin holes filled with styrene discs and they were cleaned up also, so that’s where I’m at with the build as of now. I have gone through the kit and think I’ve found and eradicated all the pin marks that will be visible and glad I’ve done it in one go as stumbling across things like this later would maybe lead to me slowing down the build and probably shelving it for something nice and new and shiny from the stash. I’m still waiting a few things for the cockpit and I’m also still wondering what to do about the wheel wells lack of detail. 

 

 

 

[LSP_K2]

The wheel wells are terrible, no doubt about that. I'm still trying to determine if I want to scratch mine, or just leave well enough alone. Scratched would certainly look a lot better, but it's a whole lot of work for very little gain, as I see it.

[ade rowlands]

2 hours ago, LSP_Typhoonattack said:

The wheel wells are terrible, no doubt about that. I'm still trying to determine if I want to scratch mine, or just leave well enough alone. Scratched would certainly look a lot better, but it's a whole lot of work for very little gain, as I see it.

 

I have something of a plan and with the Mitre cutter I have coming it should make it easier, especially where duplication is needed. I don’t plan to fully detail the bays but I will probably have a go at creating a rudimentary version of the canvas liner from plasticard. There’s also a couple of holes that would need to be drilled out which should be simple enough. There’s other parts that have dished indentations which I can’t see a way to replicate. 

[ade rowlands]

 

 

My attempts at restoring the kit detail lost when removing the ejector pin marks. There where some ghost marks left from the original kit parts which I used as a template, however I went a little wrong on the rear bulkhead part and got the angle not quite right, which has thrown a few other measurements out as I discovered when I test fit the cockpit floor and seat bulkhead to the fuselage halves so at what is there will need to be removed, the fuselage half cleaned up and start all over again. The RP Toolz Mitre cutter made the job a heck of a lot easier in dubplocating parts, a job I wouldn’t want to tackle without one now. It was at this point I remembered those awful pointless clear fuselage halves Trumpeter included and I’d removed to the spares box on receiving the kit. They are currently on the bench, I was reminded almost right away how awful clear styrene is to work with when cleaning up the sprue gates. I have shot some Tamiya surface primer on them and we’ll see how they come out and if they are acceptable I’ll attempt to tackle the ejector pin marks without removing the kit detail this time. I have also emailed Trumpeter about replacement parts for the cowlings which I will need if I go ahead with the clear halves and asked for a price on the non clear fuselage halves. Their answer to my email will dictate what happens in raged s to progress on this kit now. If I can get new cowlings that means I can forge ahead with the clear halves, if there’s no cowlings I’ll wipe the detail from the non clear halves and start over.

 

[dodgem37]

Nicely done.

 

Sincerely,

Mark

[Alain Gadbois]

Great work on the cockpit! Those ejector pins were everywhere! Brrrr....

[LSP_K2]

On 10/24/2018 at 9:37 PM, ade rowlands said:

 

I have something of a plan and with the Mitre cutter I have coming it should make it easier, especially where duplication is needed. I don’t plan to fully detail the bays but I will probably have a go at creating a rudimentary version of the canvas liner from plasticard. There’s also a couple of holes that would need to be drilled out which should be simple enough. There’s other parts that have dished indentations which I can’t see a way to replicate. 

 

I completely gave up any idea of changing them at all from the OOB configuration on my kit; too much work, and I really don't care about wheel wells anyway.

[ade rowlands]

About time for an update. I'd left this kit alone for a while as the bench had been packed away (I work at one of the kitchen worktops). So we left off with some scratch cockpit work that I then found out I'd gotten the angle of the rear part wrong which threw off the lengths and positions of everything else. I decided it needed to be done away with and started over so out it came, sanded out and polished the bare cockpit sides again and prepared to start the cockpit over. What I did this time was add the cockpit rear deck to help aid the cockpit floor positioning and then holding the cockpit floor in place, drew with marker the portion of the rear bulkhead and seat to get the position I needed to add the rear styrene strip to. Did this to both fuselage halves. Worked a treat and building from that rear part I added all the other detail I'd obliterated earlier in dealing with the ejection pin marks.

So here we have the cockpit, version 2 with some of the kit parts added to my scratch parts.

 

 

 

This cockpit wall was a little more complex and took a little longer to do. Had to make the backing plate you can just about see behind the Oxygen regulator. There is a very vague rendition of it on the kit parts that you'd swear was a moulding flaw if you didnt know there was a plate there on the real thing. Replaced the kit part for the dials of the Oxy regulator and added some punched discs to the rear simulate the back of the dials. Th faces are Airscale bezels. We then have the control valve and plumbing for the Oxygen system. Just 0.4mm Brass rod bent around to approximate the real deal. The 2 things that look like blobs are resin nuts. Using my phone which doesnt do Macro well, thankfully or you'd see more flaws. The plumbing is 2 lines joined in the middle and the 2 nuts simulate the area the join is in, will stand out more once painted. Then there's the tap/faucet for regulating the flow I assume, another Airscale part.

 

Cockpit floor with much added plumbing from Lead wire and some Styrene rod to simulate the rudder cables from the pedals. The angled bits of plumbing sticking out of the floor are resin bits from Top Studio, designed for 1/24 car models for plumbing joints, thought they'd work lively here when trimmed to the required shape.

 

 

Another view. Cannon breech cover yet to be added. Some more detail added with Lead Wire and Styrene.

 

 

View off the added detail to the rear wall.

 

 

And finally a close up as well as I can do with my phone of the Rudder pedal. The kit parts are ok for detail but a little thick so I used Radu Briznan etch pedals here. The plumbing again a top studio resin joint and lead wire. This large scale begs for this kind of detail to be added and I thought I'd have a go and oblige.

 

Edited December 4, 2018 by ade rowlands

[ade rowlands]

Not happy with the kit control column either. I think its a bit short and chunky. I'll have to think on that.

[MikeMaben]

Ade , you know you can go crazy doing things like this 

 

 

 

 

[Alain Gadbois]

 Very nice scratch built details! The pedals are fantastic, but next to invisible in the end...

Alain