Border 1/35 Fw 190A-6 Nowotny Double Chevron

[SwissFighters]

1 hour ago, Antonio Argudo said:

 

Thanks Antonio. That makes sense.

[MDriskill]

The early "short nose" A-0 through A-4 machines look very similar to the "stretched" A-5 and A-6  from many angles, but a reliable way to distinguish them in photos is the proximity of the front gun cover latch to the engine cowl.

[Thunnus]

Thank you all for your comments and detailed information on the A-5/6.  Great stuff!  Just a reminder... I am not a 100% accuracy guy.  Starting from the wing bottom gun covers, there are going to be some inaccuracies on this build.  The issues that I can correct and WANT to correct, I will attempt.  Otherwise... thank you for the info but I'm not going to do it.  The length of the MG17 barrels should be easy to adjust but... one of the barrels already has a hairline crack in it from the drilling of the cooling holes.  And I'll consider adding the little bumps... shouldn't be too hard.

 

Back to the build... The headrest/armor part has been assembled and painted.

 

 

Unlike the Dora, the Anton had a pulley system that kept the aerial line taut when the canopy was slid open.  I thought I'd add the wire inside the canopy.

 

 

 

 

New product!  Being lazy and not wanting to mask the clear parts "manually" and lacking my go-to masks from Eduard, I thought I'd give this new company (new to me, anyway) a try.

 

 

Mask material is similar to the Eduard stuff and yellow Tamiya tape.  The masks pieces have numbers, which is a great idea as it prevents confusion over mask orientation.  However, no instructions are included so you have to figure out placement yourself, which is not difficult on a simple canopy like the Fw 190. I found the fit of the masks to be superb with one small exception.  The small cut-out for the aerial connection tab was a hair too small.

 

 

The painted Revi 16B gun sight is now glued into place.  The opening for the gun sight has been enlarged to fit the slightly longer Quickboost version.

 

 

Some views of the cockpit before I cover it with the masked clear parts.

 

 

 

 

 

The clear parts are secured into place using Tamiya Extra Thin cement.

 

 

After a couple of dry-fitting attempts, I found that my decision to glue the inboard wing gun covers into place resulted in them sitting uniformly too low in relations to the fuselage.  So I had to add a shim there.

 

 

The wings are now glued onto the fuselage.  The fit, with the exception of the aforementioned gun cover joint, was very good.

 

 

With the major airframe components now secured with glue, I was curious to see how the engine cowling parts would fit.  So I put them together using just tape.  Again, the fit is excellent.  Really impressive. 

 

 

 

 

 

I am not going to pose any of these panels open.  I prefer to preserve the lines of the aircraft. But I am thinking about having at least one of the engine panels removable.

 

Here are the MG17s in place and how the barrels might be too long.

 

 

The wheels have been painted and weathered and the masking tape from the oleo section has been removed.

 

 

[Cycling Guy]

Excellent update. 
 

Question for you: prior to painting your sub assemblies, do you mask off the mating/gluing surfaces when possible or do you sand / scrape paint away?

[monthebiff]

Looking very good John, been watching you bring this together with interest. Personally I wouldn't build a 35th scale plane as it just wouldn't sit with my collection and was surprised when you went  for 48th scale belts which worked very nicely indeed.

 

Having done a Revell F-8 with all the Eduard extras and all the panels open plus  a few more which about killed me I'm exited to see you work you magic on this one.

 

Regards. Andy 

Edited September 6, 2023 by monthebiff

[scvrobeson]

Doesn't exactly interest me, but this looks like a pretty nice kit, and you're doing another amazing job on it. The great paint is really accentuated by the photography that shows it off

 

 

 

Matt 

[Gazzas]

Great update, John.  And your dirty wheels look fabulous.

[Thunnus]

On 9/5/2023 at 1:38 PM, Cycling Guy said:

Excellent update. 
 

Question for you: prior to painting your sub assemblies, do you mask off the mating/gluing surfaces when possible or do you sand / scrape paint away?

Thank you!  On this build, I've primarily scraped away paint from any glue edges.  Depending on the situation, I've also used Micro Mask and even cut custom masks to keep the glue surfaces free of paint.

 

 

On 9/5/2023 at 1:52 PM, monthebiff said:

Looking very good John, been watching you bring this together with interest. Personally I wouldn't build a 35th scale plane as it just wouldn't sit with my collection and was surprised when you went  for 48th scale belts which worked very nicely indeed.

 

Having done a Revell F-8 with all the Eduard extras and all the panels open plus  a few more which about killed me I'm exited to see you work you magic on this one.

 

Regards. Andy 

 

On 9/5/2023 at 7:36 PM, scvrobeson said:

Doesn't exactly interest me, but this looks like a pretty nice kit, and you're doing another amazing job on it. The great paint is really accentuated by the photography that shows it off

 

 

 

Matt 

Thanks Andy and Matt!  It's a very interesting kit and I am enjoying the build.  I know it's a strange scale for most LSP enthusiasts but if you can get beyond that, a great kit awaits.  I've been impressed by different aspects of this kit, most notably the fit of the parts and the crispness of the molded detail.

 

 

On 9/5/2023 at 9:41 PM, Gazzas said:

Great update, John.  And your dirty wheels look fabulous.

Thank you Gaz!  I do the wheels a little bit different from most builders.  Instead of highlighting the recessed treads in a lighter, muddy color, I prefer to put the weathering on the tire's contact surfaces and leave the recessed treads darker.

 

As was pointed out by some sharp-eyed LSPers, the A-5/A-6 featured a fuselage extension that affected the position of the MG17 gun barrel ends.  They should not protrude as much as the Border kit shows, which is more in-line with an A-4.  Also, there were small blisters at forward edge of the gun cowling on the A-5/A-6 to accommodate this lengthening.

 

 

So... I have fashioned up some little blisters by cutting up the tips of some rockets from a 1/48 P-38 kit.

 

 

Preliminary positioning of the blisters... I have to be careful if I want to trim the leading edge of this gun cowling because that edge seats on the part forward of it.

 

 

The tips of the MG17 are sliced off, barrels shortened slightly, and then re-glued onto the barrels.

 

 

Here's what the shortened MG17's look like, relative to the cowling openings and new blisters.  Concurrent to this work, I've cleaning up the wing root joints with putty and/or black Ca glue.

 

 

Although the kit instructions, unfortunately, do not show how the extended landing gear is installed, all of the necessary parts are supplied.  I had missed the retraction motor/strut and the small downlock rod previously so I tracked them down on the sprues, added some wiring detail and painted them.

 

[Troy Molitor]

Awesome build going on here John.  

[Thunnus]

Thanks for the comment Troy!  

 

This build has hit a little pothole.  Not knowing much about the Fw190A, I was assuming that the Border A-6 kit provided the inner landing gear doors.  The photos of Nowotny's Double Chevron clearly shows these...

 

 

Hmmm... cannot find the doors on the sprues or in the instructions.  More digging and I realize that the inner door configuration was being phased out somewhere in the A-6 production run.  And it appears that the wheel wells and landing gear covers were modified when the inner doors were deleted.  If I want to show the inner doors, I've got some work to do.  In addition to scratching up the doors themselves, I'll have to do some cutting up of the wheel well openings and modify the outer landing gear covers as well.

 

A part of me wants to ignore the photo and just leave it as is but I can't.  I'm going to try and represent the inner gear doors as best as I can.  It's not going to be 100% accurate so please bear with some of the practical concessions I'm going to make on this little exercise.

Here's a photo of a restored A-6 that has the inner doors in place.  The intended target, if you will.

 

 

A scan of a drawing from the Airframe and Miniature #7 published by Valiant Wings shows the placement and shape of the inner doors.

 

 

And here's a scan of the Border 190A wheel wells.

 

 

Looking closely at the Border landing gear covers, you can deduce what happened when the inner doors were deleted.  The covers were slightly extended.  Placing the outline of the wheel well opening onto the landing gear cover and highlighting the line between the old gear cover and extended version, I have rough mock-up of the inner landing gear door IF the wheel well openings were not modified.

 

 

Looking at the restored A-6, we can see that rear edge of the wheel well is straight as it approaches the inner doors, presumably all the way to the ammo chute. Incorporating this information onto my scan of the wheel opening, we can define the approximate limits of removal in yellow.  Yellow area + green area gives us the shape of the inner door that approximates the shape I see in the Airframe and Miniature plan view.

 

 

Obviously, this would be simpler if I had caught this before assembly but now I have to consider what's already in place and work around those limitations.  The straight cut at the back edge of the wheel well to the ammo chute looks relatively simple, with no major obstacles.

 

 

But modifications to the front edge of the wheel well opening will be restricted by the wheel well cover so I probably won't be messing with any major cuts there.

 

 

That's the rough game plan.  Before I do any cutting of the wheel wells, I'm going to try and make the inner doors first.  Stay tuned...

[scvrobeson]

Appreciate the attention to detail John. Little surprised that they missed it, but they probably thought it easier to just make one wing than make a separate bottom wing for the early/late version of the A-6

 

 

Matt 

[MDriskill]

X

Edited September 10, 2023 by MDriskill

[Thunnus]

4 hours ago, scvrobeson said:

Appreciate the attention to detail John. Little surprised that they missed it, but they probably thought it easier to just make one wing than make a separate bottom wing for the early/late version of the A-6

 

 

Matt 

Thank you Matt! It would take a large amount of plastic to represent the option so I can understand why Border didn't.  I was just clueless to this entire issue until just now.

 

 

4 hours ago, MDriskill said:

OK this is a reach, but...

 

In the recent JaPo book German Fighters in the West, a fascinating pair of photos shows the same A-5 with both set-ups. There's an earlier shot with the inner doors, but a later one shows those replaced by the small fixed inner fairing, the main gear door extenders added, and an ETC 501 rack and drop tank installed. Either setup could be fitted relatively easily to any Fw 190A, though beyond early A-6 production the centerline rack setup apparently did predominate on new-build machines.

 

The inner doors are a complex "cranked" shape too, incorporating the sloping channel for the underside exhaust pipes. So...depending on your tolerance for artistic license...who's to say ol' Nowotny never did a longer mission with a drop tank, LOL...

 Yes, the complex shape really dismayed me at first but I think I it's do-able.  At least in a very superficial and not dimensionally accurate way.

 

Prior to discovering the inner cover issue, I had glued on the horizontal stabilizers as well as the wing ailerons.

 

 

Iterative applications of Mr Primer Surfacer 1000 to fill the multiple seams in this area.  There are some subtle "ghost" seams that still need to be addressed but the majority of the fill work is done.

 

 

At this time, I decided to try a mock-up of the inner gear door using brass sheet and Oramask 810 masking material.  The drawings I showed in my previous post were used to create a mask of the door outline.  The mask was placed on a sheet of brass and sprayed with Mr Primer Surfacer 1000.  I now have an outline of the door and is easily cut to shape using a pair of scissors.

 

The door is not a perfectly flat piece of metal either.  In addition to the raised sections on the interior, the door features an abrupt curvature to accommodate the recess aft of the lower exhaust exit.  You can see that curvature on the photo below...

 

 

So I rolled the base edge of the brass door on a toothpick to approximate that curvature. The internal detail on the interior of the gear door was replicated in CAD and multiple masks of this pattern were printed out.  I used two copies of the mask, exactly on top of one another to create the raised detail.

 

 

The door was sprayed with Mr Primer Surfacer 1000 and then RLM 02 Green Grey.  Here is the mock-up temporarily placed on the unmodified wheel well. This proves to me that I can make an acceptable door but I'm going to play around with this a bit.  The brass prevents me from adding rivet detail to match the rest of the model so preferrably, I'd like to use sheet styrene.

[LSP_Kevin]

That's great work, John!

 

Kev

[scvrobeson]

So cool watching you create these extra details.  I hope that it all works out successfully 

 

 

 

Matt