Messerschmitt Bf-109-G, Erich Hartmann - Finished

[mozart]

Excellent Michael…..you can breathe now! All looks very square and shipshape. 

[Dpgsbody55]

10 hours ago, mozart said:

Excellent Michael…..you can breathe now! All looks very square and shipshape. 

 

I think I'll breathe again once I've worked out how to mask this for painting without ripping parts off, once I get to that stage.    But yes, it is looking good right now and I'm enjoying this build a lot.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

 

 

 

[Dpgsbody55]

Another quick update, as I've now come to the end of the fourth stage of the instruction manual.  I have left a couple of parts out, such as cowlings, wheels and undercarriage doors, but there's method in my madness as you'll see as I get towards the end of this build.  Those parts will be added after the paint/varnish/decal/varnish stage.

 

This update is about more added around the engine area, starting with guns.  I have bought Z-M's metal gun barrels and so the first step is to cut the machine gun barrels off the kit part and add the brass barrels.

 

 

These were primed and painted then added to the guns themselves, which were them immediately glued into place.  The ejector chutes were added next, followed by a couple for parts that go in the engine bulkhead and engine itself.  Both are in RLM66 below the ejector chute on the left side in the next picture.

 

 

The gun barrels needed a little touch up, and I've daubed some Mr Surfacer 500 around the fuselage to wing joint.

 

Next, I built up the two halves of the cowling around the oil header tank and also the two halves of the gun cover.  Then the main engine top cowlings were taped together to check how all this fits.  I will be displaying the model with the cowlings open, and so have used the appropriate parts in the engine to wing fillet area which do not allow for the cowlings to close.  However, the fit all seems to be pretty good.  I seem to have got the engine in the right spot as the gun troughs that are glued to the engine line up very well with the cowlings.  I think I can start to breathe again now, as the top cowlings will mask most of the engine when it comes time to paint.

 

 

 

In the next picture, the gun cowling has been permanently attached and the wing joints given a final clean up.  Very little Mr Surfacer was needed and clean up was done with a cotton bud dipped in levelling thinner.

 

 

From here, I'll be adding wing flaps, rad flaps and ailerons, together with gun sight and canopy, pitot and aerials.  Then I can start on the paint process.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

[Dpgsbody55]

Something I noticed about the brass gun kit, which I forgot to mention.  The kit provides not just gun barrels for the 13mm machine guns and 30mm cannon (the latter of which I didn't use), but also barrels for the 7.92 machine guns and also the 20mm cannon fitted to other Gustav variants.  Does this mean there may be an early Gustav kit to come from Zoukei Mura??  Or one with under wing cannons???

 

 

Not that I'm trying to start a rumour, of course .......

 

Cheers,

Michael

Edited December 10, 2023 by Dpgsbody55

[mozart]

Marvellous, magnificent Michael.....the build I mean!! 

[Dpgsbody55]

The wing flaps, ailerons and radiator flaps are finally all complete.  It took a while as it turns out the model is not quite so marvelous - I made a booboo.   I'm building mine with the flaps up, but the radiator flaps open.  I've had a look at other builds of this kit on here at LSP, and this pose doesn't appear to have done before.  These flaps opened thermostatically when the engine started to get a little hot, though it would have been nicer if I could have posed them slightly less open.  The kit provides a choice of four rad flap actuators, depending on combination of wing flaps up or down, rad flaps closed or open and which way those open is also dependent on wing flap position.  Complicated, ain't it. 

 

In an earlier post, I mentioned the vertical positioning of the radiators when mounting them in the inner wing structure.  If they're pushed in too far, the top wing panel won't fit which happened on mine, so I "loosened" it with some extra thin Tamiya cement, pushed it down to clear the top wing skin and continued on my merry way.

 

Turns out I hadn't pushed it down far enough. 

 

On starting the right rad flaps, the first part to go in is part C-4 which is the actuator hinge pin.  Mine didn't fit because that radiator was still too high in the wing.  There are cut outs in the radiators themselves which have to be in the right place to allow the rad flaps to be fitted.  So I had to alter part C-4 it quite a lot to get it in place, the also alter the inner flap actuator (part C-2).  The outer actuator, part C-24, also needed a little filing to get it to fit, and I did a lot of test fitting of the rad flaps (parts B-14 & B-15) to make sure they lined up vertically with the outer wing skins.  I altering all these parts, I also had to be careful that the radiator flaps aligned properly with the outer wing surfaces too.  Thankfully the left side had much less of a problem here, but still needed a small amount of filing on the inner actuator and hinge pin. 

 

My suggestion to eliminate this issue is to glue in place the hinge pin (C-4 right wing and C10 on the left) when gluing the radiator in place.  It won't interfere with anything else.  Also, dry fit the outer actuator then put that part aside for later.  The vertical positioning of the radiator assemblies into the inner wing structure (parts C-1 and C-13) is critical to ensure both the proper fitment of the outer wing skin and the later fitment of the radiator flaps, however you pose them.  One other thing I might mention is that when building the radiators themselves, if you pose the leading edge of the radiator in the down position, then I think the rad flaps should also be open, flaps up or down.  I think.  It's no good trying to get extra air in if the way out is closed.  That just creates drag.  I think.   Experten please correct me here if I'm wrong.

 

In the end, it turned out ok.  The following picture is the left wing, after the rad flap and aileron has been fitted, but before the wing flap is fitted.

 

 

A closer view.

 

 

Both wing trailing edges.

 

 

Right wing.

 

 

Left wing.

 

 

Gun sight, windscreen and canopy, some other final bits next, and maybe a little paint next time.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

[mozart]

Oh that sounds complicated Michael! I’m glad things have worked out for you in the end though.

[MikeMaben]

So what was the booboo ?  Did I miss something ?  ... again ? 

[Dpgsbody55]

21 hours ago, mozart said:

Oh that sounds complicated Michael! I’m glad things have worked out for you in the end though.

 

It's not really that complicated, but it is a sign as to how exact the engineering of these kits actually is.  I like that as well as the detail in this kit and it goes together very well.  You just have to be careful and keep thinking about the bits that go on after.  One of the things I'm enjoying about this kit is that it shows just how small the 109 was.  Everything is packed in so tightly and with such detail.  I've built lots of 109's, but none show how small it was as this one does.  Just gluing fuselage halves together doesn't give that same sense.

 

18 hours ago, MikeMaben said:

So what was the booboo ?  Did I miss something ?  ... again ? 

 

I made a booboo gluing the right radiator in place, vertically.  There are cut outs in the radiator sides that take the radiator flap hinges and I pushed the radiator up unto the wing too high to allow that alignment.  The rad clears the wing skins, but is just that bit too high to allow the rad flap hinges to go in properly.  If I'd fitted these when building up the wing innards, it would not have been a problem.  I had to alter a couple of parts while ensuring that the radiator flaps aligned smoothly with the wing surfaces.  A bit of a pfaff and altering parts is never a good idea really....

 

This is the one issue I've found building this model.  Everything goes together so well that it's not actually a difficult build.  Except here where a stop could have been molded into the wing inner structure to prevent this problem occurring in the first place.  That aside, the engineering of the kit has been excellent.  There's not a lot of building left to do now.  Just a lot of painting.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

[Dpgsbody55]

A little more progress on the 109.  The gun sight and windscreen are on, the Hartman figure is more or less finished, and I've put the first colour on.

 

This next picture shows the finished gun sight and windscreen, plus the pilot figure getting a bit of colour.  The windscreen comprises three parts, being the screen itself, the bullet proof glass and the screen support frame.  The bullet proof glass was masked and painted, then the mask removed and the glass glued in to the screen using Micro Klear glue, rather than norma styrene cement.  The frame around the back of the windscreen was also painted, but glued in with a small amount of styrene cement.

 

 

A different view of the windscreen.  It got a bit of the excess glue cleaned up after I took this shot.

 

 

Gun sight now in place.

 

 

The first colour, RLM04 Gelb went on today.  I've painted the wing tips, lower engine cowling, and the lower part of the oil tank cover.  Why is yellow one of the hardest colours to cover and clean out of your air brush???? .

 

 

 

The pilot figure now close to finished.  I'm reasonably happy with this, but might try to improve him slightly.  The eye balls are supposed to be blue, but the camera flash has washed out the light blue I used.  I'm also working on the opening canopy too.  Beside the figure is the armoured head rest.

 

 

Another flash-free shot of the pilot figure.  I used Tamiya neutral gray for the pants, cap and shirt collar, flat black for the boots, tie and fur collar of the jacket, and Tamiya flat dark brown for the jacket.  I've picked out a few details in either light gray or gloss silver, the pilots face is a flesh colour I mixed up, the lips are Tamiya flesh, which I think is too pink to be used for the skin, and a Mr Colour sandy brown for his hair and eye brows.  The brown leather jacket and boots have been shiny'ed up by rubbing my fingers over those parts to try to get a leather look.

 

 

Lastly, here's a pic of the plane with the bottom of the engine and the exhausts masked up.  The cowling has been taped together and will mask the top half of the engine, and the oil tank cover is slipped in place but will be masked over the yellow part and glued in place tomorrow. 

 

 

My next job is do a little more clean up them to mask the rest of the model.  Then I'll start painting properly.  Until next time.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

[MikeMaben]

Looking more like an airplane Mike, ... Nice.

[Dpgsbody55]

I hope everyone here had a very merry Christmas.  It was a warm 35 degress C here on the day and strangely Santa ignored the cold beer I left for him, so I drunk it on his behalf.    Perhaps you even got a bit of modelling bench time.  I managed to, but then I only had one Christmas celebration to recover from.  I have a very small family .

 

The 109 is now painted, though it took a few sessions.  The first job was to mask up then spray some Tamiya AS12 on it, followed by a little liquid mask applied strategically with a wire to mimic scratches.

 

 

No extra masking for the first colour which is Mr Color RLM75 grau violet.

 

 

More masking, then the second colour of Model Master RLM74 grau grun.  In the bottle, and aslo in this picture, it looks more grau than grun, but in the plastic you can see some grun in the colour.

 

 

Yet more masking followed by some Mr Color RLM76 licht blau.The area around the cockpit canopy gets painted separately on this model, which is why it still shows as AS12.

 

 

The next session saw the fuselage top masking removed;

 

 

followed by the mottling in both grau violet and grau grun, which also blurred the much too distinct line between the top camo colours and the blue sides.  At least in the picture above you can see some grun in the grau grun.

 

 

I'm building the second aircraft from the top, Yellow 1.

 

Here's a closer view.

 

 

This plane had the area around the canopy painted in what is believed to be RLM66 schwartz grau.  It is a G-6, but at the time Hartmann flew it, it was fitted with an Erla hood.  So here it is now with that area painted schwartz grau and also with all masking removed.

 

 

Sorry about the photo, as it makes all the top colours look very grau, with not much distinction between the three top colours.  I suspect also that Mr Color's schwartz grau is quite schwartz enough.  Hopefully a coat of clear gloss varnish will help and that is my next step, starting tomorrow which will be followed by decals and a top coat of flat or satin clear varnish.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

Edited December 29, 2023 by Dpgsbody55

[Uncarina]

Michael, I don’t often visit the Group Build pages…to my detriment! I’m just catching up with your marvelous work here. It’s looking great so far!

 

Cheers,  Tom

[Dpgsbody55]

Thanks Tom.  I appreciate the encouragement.

 

I took another picture of it this morning using purely manual settings on my camera and no flash.  Now you can see a little better colour differentiation.  It probably helps that the paint is completely dry too .

 

 

I was thinking about doing the RLM66 around the canopy again in a darker almost black gray, but now I think I'll leave it until I've varnished it and see how it looks then.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

[DugyB]

On 12/30/2023 at 6:29 AM, Dpgsbody55 said:

Thanks Tom.  I appreciate the encouragement.

 

I took another picture of it this morning using purely manual settings on my camera and no flash.  Now you can see a little better colour differentiation.  It probably helps that the paint is completely dry too .

 

 

I was thinking about doing the RLM66 around the canopy again in a darker almost black gray, but now I think I'll leave it until I've varnished it and see how it looks then.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

Looking more like a true Smitty everyday now,  I’ve got two other types Zoukie Mura kits in my collection, I haven’t built up the courage to tackle one yet.