Don’t know what possessed me to start this beast. After reading kit reviews and some forum topics here, I guess I picked a bad week to give up drinking. I can still sniff glue though [:)] I have the night fighter version but of course I want to build the bomber…more glass to mask. I pretty much spent the entire weekend masking canopies and test fitting them. I put a parts order in for the missing gun mount, but I also made a mold and I’m trying to make the part out of both Testors canopy glue and Krystal Klear. Any ideas on how to make a clear plastic part? So far the worst part was the rear canopy set. After using a ton of tape to hold evertything together I glued the two halves together with testors liquid cement. IMO it didnt turn out half bad. I masked those and the nose canopy. Then I discovered that the Eduard masking set that was supposed to be for the fighter version was actually for the bomber version…minus the masks for the nose canopy. I liked those better than what I have done so took what I did off and re-masked. From what I’ve read I’m going to get plenty of use of the perfect plastic putty. Especially on the wings. The gondola looks like a pain as well. Any helpful tips in it’s construction? I looked up Joe’s build from a couple of years ago. If I can do a fraction of what he did I would be happy. Mine is not going to have any external bombs though, and I’ll have to see what I can so with those nasty dive brakes
I can’t help but ask as to why you would try to concert a C model into an A model— seems like an exercise in frustration to me, when there are so many good A model kits out there. In addition, the gear in an A model’s nose is going to be vastly different than in a C model, which carried extra guns in the nose.
At the time I bought this model it was the only one I could find at that time in 1:48. From what I can tell this kit is an updated version of the promodeler Ju88A-4 kit but it’s missing the external bombs and one gun port otherwise the rest is there. I see that ICM has Ju88A-5 kit in 1:48 and I’ve heard good thing s about their kits
I know you needed the A-4 instructions but I couldn’t find them in old instructions drawer. I usually save them but apparently not in this particular case. Good luck in this endeavor and hope you’ll post some pics of your progress. I look forward to your work. I just grabbed the ICM kit, so I may dig into that soon. Do you like movies about Gladiators?
Yes, yes I do. I did manage to find a copy of the instructions Right now I’m trying to make the clear plastic gunport. So far the closest I’ve come is with testors clear canopy glue. Krystal clear dried rubbery and with a ton of bubbles and I can’t keep the sprue plastic hot enough to force it into my mold. Any ideas as to how to make a clear plastic part? And don’t call me Shirley[:D]
wow, haven’t heard so many 'airplane’s references Condensed into a few posts. love it [:)]
Well it would appear that I’m out of luck with the parts request. The kit is no longer supported. I can still do an A1 version with one rear gun but I will have to modify the front canopy by putting a hole for the front gun in it. The front canopy with the gun slot does not fit well with the rear canopy that has the one gun. I’m still trying to make a part out of testors clear cement and I’m still searching for a different material to try. I guess I picked a bad week to give up amphetamines.
Well, you’ll have to do more than that to do an A-1. The engines cowls were visibly different. The 1 was round on the bottom. The wing tips were shorter and more squared off too. I’m one of the people who have been clamoring for an A-1 in this scale. Maybe ICM will come through on the heels of their A-5. Good luck luck…we are all counting on you.
That’s right…I had the lasagna
Well I’m afraid those modifications are above my pay grade. I have sorta fabricated another gunport but when I looked at the canopies for the A-4 that were included with this kit I didn’t like how thin the canopy framing looked. The 1:32 A-1 model’s canopy looks very similar to the C-6’s one in the kit…minus the front gunport…which now mine has. So I’m afraid as far as historical accuracy goes my effort will not come close. Most likely I will end up with an A-1 looking canopy and camo theme, A-4 engines and gondola, and C-6 decals. I did try to make some decals for the A-1 version but I’m not happy with the color depth. They look to faded compared to the kit decals. I will try my best on the old bird. At least it will be quasi cannon. I saw one build out there with german camo and decals but with red with and blue american striping. Surprisingly it looked pretty cool
I had the fish[+o(]
This thing has 4 engines It’s a whole different type of flying…all together.
Do it for the Zipper
Well I made some progress in the pit. To jazz things up a bit I decided to make some seatbelts. I watched a YouTube video on it and thought that’s easy peasy. Guess again. My already high admiration for anyone who can scratch build skyrocketed even further. So have a good chuckle at my belts. I’m sure they will look much better when they are covered by canopy. I guess a good quote for today would be
Mayday! MAYDAY!..mayday? mayday? that’s a Russian holiday.
It’s a Twister…a Twister
I thought your belts looks darn good, then I read your update and looked again. Nope, I was right, they do look pretty darn good. I haven’t had any luck with building belts unless I have buckles to use. Without buckles I just can’t seem to make them look this good.
BK
Thanks Brandon. Just had another successful use for perfect plastic putty. The guide holes for the dive flaps on the right wing were a mess. One was missing and the other turned out to be in the wriong spot. After trial and mostly error the are ok now. Just had to fill the two “allied bullet” holes with putty
Today was construction day. I got the wings, engines, and most of the body put together. One thing struck me as odd about the engines. As I was building them I realized they were two of the same side. I went back and looked at pictures of the 1:48 Dragon models as well as the Promodeler A-4 and C-6. Be darned if they weren’t all the same. I see they fixed it in the newer 1:72 kit. Oh well as T’Pau would say “The air is the air”
The cockpit looks great. Those seat belts don’t look bad either. Hospital? what is it? A large building with lots of doctors and patients…but that’s not important right now Ted…
Wouldn’t you know after everthing was made a found a whole set of PE belt buckles. Construction has come to a screeching halt by a little thing called TAXES.
“Johnny what can you make of this?”
“This? Why, I can make a hat or a brooch or a pterodactyl”
Well for what it’s worth I’m not sure if it is a very confused fighter or a very confused bomber. In the end my homemade decals just didn’t look good next to the real thing so I just went with the fighter decals. As you can see I didn’t paint the dive brakes. I lined them up and carefully applied some Tamiya tape…Oops got some on the decal… Spent the next two hours cutting and pasting to fix it so no painting on that one. Some firsts on this one. First homemade seatbelts, first double masking for camo, first fabrication of a part, and first re-purposing of PE parts. Used some control knobs PE to make some gunsights, and I had to make a gunport for the back out of some melted clear sprue forced into an impression. Had some issues with the masking. I did use an eduard set but despite my burnishing the edges down I had alot of bleed through. I wonder if it was because I waited a couple of weeks between masking and painting and maybe the tape lifted off. Guess I should have burnished it down again. Had some issues with the final canopy fit despite repeated test fits. One of these days I’m gonna glue the canopies on before painting like the big boys do. Also had problems with the decals silvering. I found out that an application of liquid decal film went along way to help with that. I guess my gloss coat wasn’t as smooth as I thought. Anyhoo I hope you enjoy the pics. This is the first time I used the camera on my new Iphone 6S. Methinks it takes too good of pictures
“Jim never vomits at home”
