Those are both looking great, Mike. Top-shelf work all-round.
Sorry I’ve not been keeping up on your progress, was gone for a week with little free time.
Thanks, Mustang, SS and Greg – it’s great when folks as talented as I know you all are appreciate one’s work! We all tend to be our own hardest critics and I see the shortcomings in my work – I was feeling this one was not one of my best, but your appreciation makes me think that by the time she’s done all the elements will have come together for a pleasing, convincing whole!
I’ll do everything I can today – sealing the decals should be the last spray work. I’m considering leaving the white crosses unsealed so I can potentially remove them and replace with stencilled crosses in future – just a possibility.
Hopefully there’ll be pics tonight,
Cheers, Mike/TB379
Ah, no worries, Mike. That’ll be the case and for sure all you guys that actually know what you are doing are indeed your own harshest critics!
As a born-again newbie, I’ve been amazed at how these come together at the end. It’s been an amazing 18 months for me to watch over and over here.
Even my own, 2 builds out of 3 so far since return from hiatus finished up better than I expected. And as Nicholson said in Mars Attacks, two out of three ain’t bad. 
No worries, Greg --and thanks again!
Well, today was very busy with house cleaning so I didn’t get done all I wanted to. I sealed the decals (including the upper white crosses) and gear bay doors, painted the trim tabs and running lights, and futured the latter; assembled and fitted the tailwheel, and painted some components of the main gear. Nothing worth a photo, I’m afraid.
Tomorrow will be another busy day cleaning in the morning, then going out to teach afternoon and evening, so I could be looking at the day after for finishing this bird.
With the canopy fitting so poorly I was thinking of trying to ease the mechanism back open, the poor fit will then be less obvious, and it’ll show off the etched harness. However I have as yet no idea how to do a slack antenna wire. If I can open the canopy I might leave off the wire until I have more idea of how to go about it.
M/TB379
I haven’t done a slack antenna wire yet, Mike. Will be interested to see how you go about it.
I just found pics of a museum bird, good pics of the slack wire about half way down the page. (Hope it is ok to link to this)
Excellent job Mike! The accents and highlites of the weathering are from my opinion spot on! Im not a huge Ta152 fan, but seeing yours and the others that were built here make me want to do one some day.
Again, Nice work!
Doug
Looks like today was the last stressful day for me for a while, so I’m going to write that update untill tomorrow evening and post it. Hopefully I’ll be able to get all the wing seams cleaned up properly in the next couple of days. There’s still plenty of fine-tuning and a bit of filling needed, especially on the Eduard kits.
Then I’m going to concentrate on getting the Hasegawa and Tamiya 190s completely built up and ready for some paint while I play the waiting game (reason for that is below).
I ordered a lot of stuff at SprueBrothers a while ago (they had all the stuff I need available at the same time). The box with all the goodies arrived already and I got a notice to pick it up at my local post office. And that’s where those damn morons messed up: There is no [cnsod] box at the post office! It’s just not there! And nobody knows where it landed! I complained about this incident and they are trying to find the packet now. Apperently it was deposited at a post office somewhere in Austria. I don’t wanna tell you guys right away what’s inside that box (it’s a secret [;)]), but I need some of those items to continue work on my Eduard 190s. I got another small order coming in from Canada (Ultracast to be exact) with a few more bits and pieces. I’m not going all in on those 190s, but I do want my fair share of AM for each of them… Those “few bits and pieces” add up when you’re building 9 of them at the same time though… [:$]
Clemens, I’m surprised an Austrian would lose anything! Y’all seem to organised and efficient.
I’m sure your stuff will show up.
Hang in there Clemens. Jeez!
I gotta second that.
Thanks guys, I really hope they figure out what went wrong. The stuff in that box wasn’t cheap…
I’m going to take the pictures for the update now and it should be up a bit later tonight.
And that’s where those damn morons messed up: There is no box at the post office! It’s just not there! And nobody knows where it landed! I complained about this incident and they are trying to find the packet now. Apperently it was deposited at a post office somewhere in Austria.
Clemens…
NICEEEEE…
I watched a package come across country with the tracking no. and it arrived in Atlanta… then it started to move again… almost all the way back where it came from, finally got here after about 3 weeks… Just… Well Damn!!!
Oh Man that bites, Clemens. But, Joe is right when he advises you to hang there. Have some faith and I’m sure it will turn up. By all means I do hope they are right when they said it was delivered somewhere in Austria and they didn’t mean Australia.
Doug, the same thing happened to me with another package this year. I ordered some stuff (including 2 190s) directly at Eduard’s store and the post office sent the box back right after recieving it. The adress on the box was correct. Eduard took care of that problem though so it eventually arrived here…
Well I guess it’s update time!
I started off by spraying everything flat black to provide a base for the RLM 02. The black paint eliminated the problem of having those white shims in the gear bays after fixing the steps in the eduard kits. It also served as a nice, dark primer that created shadows in all the hard to reach recesses of the rather complex gear bays. Then I sprayed the gear bays with Gunze’s RLM 02 in several light coats untill I was happy with the overall coverage. Some touch-ups where pure black paint was still visible were needed, but nothing special. That Gunze color is really good BTW. I like to spray my paints very thin (usually 2 parts paint and 3-4 parts thinner, depending on what I want to do) and only spray very light coats, but it still covered very well and I was basically done after 3 coats of paint. That’s the best coverage I had so far with such a light color.
The engines’ “bulkheads” (they are just mounting plates and non-existant on the real 190s) were sprayed flat black too and masked, then I painted the engines “Steel Red”. All the pipes were brush-painted using a 1:1 mix of Tamiya’s “Flat Aluminum” and “Titanium Gold” (I wanted to give them a slight gold sheen and I think it worked out) The thicker pipe at the bottom of the engine was painted with pure Aluminum to add a bit of variety.
The leather gun sleeves of the Hasegawa gear bays are brush-painted with Red Brown (Tamiya as well) and the engines and gear bays got a black-brown oil wash. I wanted to get a greasy look on the engines so I used a rather thick wash for them, I think it worked out quite nicely.
There are only 3 engines! One disappeared! [:O] More on that later… [;)]
The Engine pics were taken with my new D5300 (first tme using it for model photography). It does a way better job at taking high-contrast pics. It’s really hard to get nice close-up shots with that large 18-105mm lens though… What do you guys think? Yay or nay?
From left to right, top to bottom: F-8, A-5, D-9, D-9 weekend, D-13, D-11. The Tamiya kit as well as the Eduard A-8s are not in this pic because the Tamiya and one of the Eduards needs repainting in the gear bays. The other one is still waiting for some PE before I can paint her.
Some close-up pics:
Hasegawa A-5:
Hasegawa F-8:
Eduard D-9/D-11/D-13:
Eduard D-9 weekend:
This one’s the reason why I only used 3 out of 4 engines. I remember reading somewhere that some earlier Doras had gear bay covers similar to the A-series 190s. Eduard provides this part in their kits but marks it as “not for use”, so I decided to model my Weekend Edition with the cover in place (I don’t want all of them to look the same down there [:D]).
Well that’s all for today folks, I hope you like it!
Cheers, Clemens
SS – you should be licensed as a Focke-Wulf assembly plant! This is the most concerted production line modelling I think I’ve ever seen, and to such excellent standard too! This will be a magnificent schwarm – how about a flightline or hanger diorama to display them all???
I’m calling the Ta-152 done. It’s been an education building a state-of-the-art kit from 25 years ago because Trimaster, for all the praise they have had over the years, and their near legendary status, had to start somewhere, and this kit was in many ways a let-down. I certainly hope Hobby Boss do the H-series planes as well as the -C series, because they will be a breeze to build in comparison to this one, which in essence fought me to the end, with dodgy decals, sloppy fit, vague instructions and so forth. There are a number of parts missing because either there are no locators for them or the instructions do not make positioning clear, or the part was simply impossible to remove from the sprue without breaking it. One of the main gear actuators went that way. There is a missing antenna under the fuselage, because there was no locator hole for it, nor did the plans mention to drill one at a time when it would have been practical. Lining up the main gear was a case of superglue and prayer, and the main shocks were moulded in the fully open position, giving the plane a serious nose-up stance – however if the shocks had been moulded to represent weight, the moraine antenna would not have cleared the ground!
I decided it was finished today, I had no more time to invest in this project – I skipped wash detailing the main gear and door interiors, which perhaps I should not have… I also skipped the loading decals for the outside of the doors, because I’ve seen Green 1 depicted without them, or with the loading data for the Dora-9, and Italeri have provided a visibly different decal, which is too large for the area! I also skipped the antenna wire, if one day I’m feeling masochistic I’ll go back and rig one! The canopy, although a poor fit, does not want to budge, so I’ll leave it where it is.
I was restrained with pigment work and metal dry brushing, so the plane is represented not long after work-up. Without further ado, here’s the pics:
Not completed to the degree I might have liked, but I know when a kit fights and to what extent it’s worth engaging in battle – and while this one would not get by a judge’s eye, it looks pretty good in the display case if I say so myself. I hope you like it, and all comments are welcome.
Now, with SS building a squadron more, the least I can do is complete the Hobby Boss D-9 in Rudel’s markings, and maybe even throw in a 1:72 Academy A-5 I started way back for Reich Defenders III – nit necessarily officially! I’ll get the A-8 to the finish post as the decal issues are solved – hopefully soon!
Cheers, Mike/TB379
What a job from a kit that gave you so many problems! I had serrious issues with my Eduard A8/R2 initially because of warping issues and know what you are talking about when you say a “kit that fought you the whole way”. This one seems like it threw you more curve balls than mine did though. Way to go Mike. Looks like you pulled this one off pal. Let me know which one you want to see in the finished builds section of the intro post.
Looking forward to seeing your D-9 next.
Clemens you are definitely a man on fire! The photos looks great and the progress is simply awesome. I don’t know how one can build that many models at one time and not say one curse word. …or did you already?
Thanks, Mustang, and thanks for running such a fantastic GB! It’s great to be part of it and to have the chance to work with such a great bunch of talented craftsmen.
How about the second pic from the top? That one shows off the paintwork nicely and is a pleasing angle.
I’ll make a start on the D-9 tomorrow, beginning with masking in prep for the canopy interior colour and the preshade.
Cheers, Mike/TB379
Mike, your 152 looks great. It’s hard to believe by the finished product that she gave you so much trouble.
Hat’s off for persistence and a job well done. Be watching for the D-9.