Fw190 D9 JV44 Hasegawa 1/32

[mc65]

thank you all, pals! 

Ernest, what about your P51B? did you completed it as per your daughter scheme?

 

Well, finally some rain has arrived here, revitalizing the weed I've been giving up. hey, looking closely, it's not that far from the RLM82! can you see that at Reichs Luftfahrt Ministerium weren't entirely wrong?

 

which then, coupled with the RLM 83, begins to make more sense, come on.

 

it must be said that the red 1, although more than known and documented, still has sides to explore. here, in this sense, searching I found a drawing with that strange blob in 82 at the root of the right wing. very unusual, it would seem a poetic license of the author, except to better study the historical photos...

 

huh, look at that?? seems to make sense...

probably a paint retouch after a major repair, as well as the lighter leading edge, in which the band in 83 remains confined just beyond the wing main beam.

 

in short, I give it credit, a pity that I don't also have the side views, for those I went a bit by feeling, always looking at the b/w photos and beautiful Jerry Crandall's drawings.

for example, the spot at the base of the tail planes some sources claim is in 83, the same color as the one behind the cockpit canopy. but it seems to me darker, and it is highly probable it is a tone, if not a colour, different: the front one is from the factory, the other was made in the field or at the maintenance dept.

let's also assume that they had the same color, it's almost impossible that they had the same shade, both for reasons of production batches and the aging of the previous one. so I used 81 corrected to darken it a little bit, and here we are.

 

to be continued...

cheers, Paolo

[Gazzas]

Nice work and interesting analysis.  Interesting is the oil streaking on the windshield and side of the aircraft.

[Thunnus]

The camo colors are starting to shape up nicely!  Can't wait to see the red and white stripes!

[mc65]

Thunnus, me too!!!  and you're too generous, I'm doing a job barely bordering on sufficient, with this model, til now... it's going like this, peace.

Gazzas, thank you too very much, where I'm poor at modeling I try to make up for it with study... in this sense I don't think there are traces of oil: the tank is placed very low down, in this airplane, and they make little sense as direction. rather (and it's not just my guess, it can also be read in various captions) they seem to be traces of an attempt to destroy the aircraft by setting fire to the cockpit. so I think I won't reproduce them, choosing to make the Red 1 before the allied capture.

 

well, strange green and dark green are ok, roughly speaking. I see a million tweaks to do, but I'm also impatient to play with the most obvious peculiarity of this aircraft, the red belly. so quick check on the prepared scratches,

 

and way to RLM23!

 

oh, hum.

preshading would work, except that the aluminum base gives the red that nuance typical of Chinese enamels, a translucent metallic red that makes your skin crawl.

I wrote it politically correct, indeed I cursed for a long time and abundantly, and in the end I had to give in to a coat of white to offer as a base for the red, this time in a classic and botched preshading.

 

which didn't solve much... tired of invoking all the known deities and some invented on the spot, I played the improvisation card: I added pure red to 23.

 

oh, it's starting to look like a red plane instead of china. pity that instead of the thin layer of color expected now there is a flow of mortar to plug the delicate work of the rivets.

more curses.

 

ok, modeling is suffering, and I'm a simpleton. 

however, since the belly had to dry and I had the red in the barrel, I took advantage of it for the little details that awaited him.

 

 

 

mmmmh .... holy macro! I'll have to clean the glue smear off that trim tab.

of course, all this could easily have been avoided with a slightly more provident planning, giving a white base, possibly preshading it, and then giving the red paint while protecting the white stripes.

but no, too easy, and then in reality they gave white after red, right? or at least, this is my assumption based entirely on this photo, where you can see the black stencils on the red, but under the white. therefore the order seems to have been red, black, white, as if at first only red had been foreseen, but it was not enough to make them sufficiently visible to the happy trigger friendly flak.

 

Oh well. go on. everywhere we read that these strips were different from each other and spaced a little randomly, but all the drawings -once the due proportions have been made- and the Hasegawa decals themselves give them the same for a width of 3.1mm.

now if I take a round measurement, let's say 10cm, and divide it by 32, I get 3.12... let's say that the average strip was of this size, and we start from this figure to space them out, this time also following the photos. photos from which it is clear that they were not made with too much fussiness. I don't know if this is Red 1, but it seems clear to me that they are of different widths.

 

but this one is Red 1, perhaps the only photo in color that has emerged so far. and here something is understood.

 

but perhaps they are best seen in b/w, all things considered.

 

 

ok, we know how wide they were on average, which ones were thinner and where they were positioned, more or less.

now we just have to map them parallel on the model, and... parallel??

 

aaaaaw... on the other hand less worse, if nothing else.

 

sigh.

I didn't think it was such a messy thing. "I do a JV44 one, all colorfu and fun, a milk run"... 

 

calm. it's just a question of figuring out which ones were thinner than average, positioning them following the photos and drawings, parallel but not too much, and seeing if all seem to make sense.

 

and then mask them in reverse, exposing only the stripes. it's a trifle.

 

this is what I tell myself... then I look Moccio (Snot) in the eyes and I read a "you stupid" and animal instinct is known, it is rarely wrong.

 

I-can-do-it. 

cheers, Paolo

[Uncarina]

Paolo,

 

I love your attention to detail! This is a great build to follow.

 

Cheers,  Tom

[Gazzas]

Very interesting update, Paolo!  

[BGB]

Fantastic work done here!!!!!

 

Cheers

Boris

[mc65]

here I am, thank you all! 

 

where were we... masked everything, final check,

 

and layer of white, after a light coat of clear to seal the edges.

 

et voilà,

 

 

it could have been worse, given the premises... there are a number of corrections to be made, obviously I managed to get some alignments of the strips wrong on separate parts such as flaps and cowl flaps.

 

on the other hand, the fixed part of the flaps I managed not to screw up too much, here these need just some RLM 02.

 

while the flaps to be touched up... let's say to be redone, which is better.

 

and here we are, roughly.

 

coming soon stencils and signs, I would say.

cheers, Paolo

 

 

 

Edited November 27, 2022 by mc65

[Uncarina]

Spectacular Paolo!

 

Cheers,  Tom

[BGB]

Keep up the good work

 

Cheers

Boris

[mc65]

thank you all, pals! 

 

as anticipated, I proceeded with stencils and signs, but first I did some retouching to the upper part, especially in the engine area.

having to realign the lines of the lower part (painted red and white after reassembly with different parts in the real one, according to my hypothesis) I took the opportunity to touch up the front annular cowl and the spots added later on the sides.

to verify the contrast between the various colors and the effective alignment of the lower part, I presented the interested parts in position. and having everything in hand, I took a couple of shots to see how the prop fits with its spinner.

 

as I imagined, little or nothing is seen of the radiator, too bad.

but hadn't I installed a Henri Daehne prop and done all that magnet work? well actually...

 

but how much do I like these resins? If there was a Nobel to aftermarket manufacturing I would be in no doubt who deserves one!

 

well, there would be also other candidates, eh... let's talk about 1ManArmy products, for example, and let's enter the field of stencils and signs.

I don't know how he makes them, but this Belgian craftsman produces sheets of kabuki paper on which extremely fine details are cut out.

to test them I started with something relatively simple, the dotted lines that delimit the walkable area on the wing.

 

it's a rather slow and demanding process, but definitely rewarding, compared to decals.

 

oh well, you say, what's the point of making two pedestrian crossings? true, but those were just a test... the real wonder are the various warnings.

I started from the largest and most hidden, but it was immediately understood that this is another level. now all the rest of the model seems to have been fished out of the differentiated garbage, in comparison!

incidentally, the black cross is an Eaglecals decal, another test I wanted to do, having to use at least part of it. excellent quality and thickness, but painted it's another thing.

while we're at it, let's talk about the rivets: I hadn't smoothed the surfaces to zero to take advantage of the thickness due to the process and increase the three-dimensional effect. here you can clearly see how giving seven thousand coats of paint didn't help at all... another lesson learned.

 

gained some confidence, I moved on to the smaller and more visible stencils. what can I say but wonderful??

 

the overall yield is spectacular. yes, analogous results can be obtained with decals, depending on the quality of the decals themselves, the procedure used, and the skills of the model maker.

here even someone with stone hands like me gets something more than decent at first shot!

 

now the problem is that using decals, however good, seems to me a sacrilege, even if I'll have to negotiate with some.

so I paint as much as I can, and only then will I move on to the decals.

ancillary problem, both the 1ManArmy and the Montex sheets (which also produce a sheet of masks dedicated to the JV44) have insignia that do not match those of the Red 1, produced at the Fieseler factories, where they used their own measurements.

that's fine, what's up. giant swastika

 

and thin crosses

 

rather than taking out the light table this time I preferred to build the masks by superimposing several layers of masking tape. doing this involves two risks: the thickness of the tape risks letting the paint infiltrate under the joints, and all this adhesive could be lethal for the underlying paintwork when removing the masks.

I solved this with various expedients: I reduced the adhesiveness of the tape by placing it on the back of my hand before applying it; I went over the joints with a toothpick checking their adhesion with a 7-thousand magnification lens; I gave a quick coat of clear to seal the joints; I sprayed the paint extremely dry, almost powdery; and I prayed throughout all the process.

 

aaaaaand.... there.

 

what to say? so far I've been lucky, soon we'll laugh with the decals!

cheers, paolo

 

 

[Uncarina]

Champion work! I can see the difference using those stencils vs. decals.

 

Cheers,  Tom

[Citadelgrad]

I have several sets of these stencils, but haven't tried them yet.   I have had very mixed results with the wet transfers, getting results ranging from “i cant believe how well that worked” to “ i cant believe that transfer disintegrated like that…now what?”

 

i will say that your examples look excellent.  The examples i see online have me converted. 

[Gazzas]

Very nice masking work, Paolo!

[Greif8]

On 11/22/2022 at 1:17 AM, mc65 said:

thank you all, pals! 

Ernest, what about your P51B? did you completed it as per your daughter scheme?

 

Well, finally some rain has arrived here, revitalizing the weed I've been giving up. hey, looking closely, it's not that far from the RLM82! can you see that at Reichs Luftfahrt Ministerium weren't entirely wrong?

 

which then, coupled with the RLM 83, begins to make more sense, come on.

 

it must be said that the red 1, although more than known and documented, still has sides to explore. here, in this sense, searching I found a drawing with that strange blob in 82 at the root of the right wing. very unusual, it would seem a poetic license of the author, except to better study the historical photos...

 

huh, look at that?? seems to make sense...

probably a paint retouch after a major repair, as well as the lighter leading edge, in which the band in 83 remains confined just beyond the wing main beam.

 

in short, I give it credit, a pity that I don't also have the side views, for those I went a bit by feeling, always looking at the b/w photos and beautiful Jerry Crandall's drawings.

for example, the spot at the base of the tail planes some sources claim is in 83, the same color as the one behind the cockpit canopy. but it seems to me darker, and it is highly probable it is a tone, if not a colour, different: the front one is from the factory, the other was made in the field or at the maintenance dept.

let's also assume that they had the same color, it's almost impossible that they had the same shade, both for reasons of production batches and the aging of the previous one. so I used 81 corrected to darken it a little bit, and here we are.

 

to be continued...

cheers, Paolo

 

Hi Paolo, unfortunately the P51B build did not make to the finish line, which happens from time to time with my builds.  On a better note I did build a nice knight figure for my daugther that she likes very much.  Your build is looking fantastic as all your builds do.

 

Ernest