Well, after months I’ve finally finished it, first model in 27 years–its the Tamiya kit, 1/48 with EagleCal decals, Aires cockpit, Eagle Editions resin prop, gun cover, cowling, wheels, Eduard PE landing flaps, Cutting Edge control surfaces, Model Design Construction resin wheelbay/engine set (with solder wire for hoses and plumbing), Moskit exhausts, brass tubing for the gun barrels on the wings and fuselage, painted with Color of Eagles RLM acrylic colors, weathered with Tamiya Smoke acrylic, Van Gogh oil paints, and Tamiya weathering powders…antenna wire is fishing line, threaded through tiny .0078" drilled holes and CA glued. I also used thin brass wire for brake lines, wrapped with strips of thin styrene. The original Red 1 shows some substantial fire damage of the windscreen (essentially blackened), as well as the starboard fuselage, just forward of the cockpit, in all known photographs of this portion of the aircraft–this I have attempted to recreate, as well as the splinter damage to the propeller blade and the overpainted white spiral on black on the propeller hub. Apparently, the fire may have been deliberately set in an attempt to destroy the craft to keep it out of Allied hands. What do you think? Any critique is welcome…
Yes, I know the base isn’t painted yet–but it looked cool anyway.
great looking build! I like how the engine (am I correct?) shows through the wheel bay things, especially the detail!
someone’s gotta clean that bird up…[:D]
Yes, that is the engine–that was a conversion from the original kit, which had the wheel wells fully enclosed from the engine area…when the Fw 190A was converted to the 190D, the medial walls of the wheel wells had to be eliminated to make room for the large Jumo in-line engine. The Tamiya kit incorrectly has the Fw 190A wheel wells.
The pilot of the Red 1 was Lt. Heinz Sachsenberg. He was one of the best of what was left of the Luftwaffe pilots by the waning years of the war, and he and others were picked by Adolf Galland to protect his JV44 Me262 fighters during take-off and landing, their most vulnerable moments…more on the JV44:
Thanks for all of the kind comments, guys. I know the paint is a bit thick (I’ve never used a DA airbrush before), and I didn’t get the panel lines to stand out well, but I’ll be a bit more organized on my next build.
Tomorrow is my birthday–think I’ll start on a tank! [:)]
looks like a greta little Dora!! Good job and welcome back to the hobby. I wish that I’d nown that they were based near salzburg seeing as I was there two weekends ago, would have made a great little side trip to find the old airfield!!!
She’s lookin very good! I like the fire damage too! I’m building mine as she would’ve appeared operationally. Someday I’ll get around to finishing her!
Looks great, welcome back to the hobby. As for critique, you mentioned the think paint, I would just add that a nice flat coat would tone everything done a bit. I’ll be interested in how you went about painting the bottom (white first, mask, then red? How did you get the spacing even?) Thanks for sharing your work.
I painted the underside white, then masked the stripes with Model Master tape (would have used Tamiya tape, but they don’t make it that thin!), and airbrushed red…unfortunately had a lot of bleeding under the tape, so I had to remask off the red and repaint the stripes white–a lot of time and effort. I measured the spacing and width of the stripes (1/32") directly off of the color artist’s renditions of the underside of the aircraft from the book “Doras of the Galland Circus” by Jerry Crandall–the definitive source on the subject. The underside drawings are 1/48 scale, which helped. Didn’t quite get the spacing perfect–but it wasn’t perfect on the original aircraft.
As for the glossy sheen, yup, I know, but I’ve tried everything…something about Tamiya Smoke just doesn’t want to tone down…I’ve given it several coats of airbrushed Model Master flat lacquer, a few coats of Dullcote, don’t know what else to try…okay, so its the “Red 1” in the rain…okay? [:D]
Note to self…Tamiya Smoke just does not want to hold onto flat lacquer. Any suggestions?
I plan on replacing the Morane antenna–the one protruding from the underside of the fuselage–with one fashioned out of brass tubing and wire. I’ll post photos of how it looks. I think the kit antenna looks, well, like an overscale plastic antenna. Thanks so much for the critique and comments…I certainly appreciate any help I can get…
Here’s a few photos of the Morane antenna I just replaced–the kit part looked very cheesy and overscale…I CA cemented thin wire into thin brass tubing, then hammered it flat, and glued it into place–I think it looks so much better:
The new antenna looks great. Thanks for info regarding the paint job, sounds as difficult as I imagined it to be!
As for the flat coat, I’ve had good success with PollyS Flat coat over smoke, it water soluable so its easy to clean up. Here’s a picture of Tamiya smoke exhaust stains with PollyS over it in a recent build…
