This is an expermental project I’ve been working on. It is dragon/pro modeler 1/48 fw190d-11. Not a kit for anyone who dislikes sanding or wants a quick project. I have 3 of these in my stash and since I was trying out alot new ideas I figure this was good one mess with. After 3 months of looking at this thing I finally decided it good enough. I am planing an a big project in the near futrue in which you will see in another post this was my lead up to insure my ideas would look ok. BTW thanks smokinguns your tire flatting trick works great and is far easier then my way.
This kit has alot of detail and is very accurate but a real bear to build. features I added were cooling gill actuators and radiator detail, moved the tail and added actuators there, hollow brass cannons in the wings and nose, added photo etch to cockpit along with scratch built throttle quadrent, photo etch and scratch built detail in the wheel wells and landing gears (did not open up wheel wells,radio antenna and last but not least rivit detail
I took some black and white photos to compare my example with actual photos of other fw190d’s and see how things change. Let me know what you think.
I just finished the proModeller kit, myself and totally agree with your comments. I was looking for a quick build of a free kit I received as a door prize, and stumbled through most of it.
My bisstes turn-off was the color call outs in the instructions. either i have mis-labelled paints or the instructions are wrong. I was anticipating a build that looked like the colors you’ve used (which did you use for the exterior, by the way?), but ended up looking horrible.
I think that this D-11 looks very good. The one thing that jumps out at me though, is that the cannons do not look to be at scale. Obviously I can’t measure, but, they look too large.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I freely admit I don’t know what the scale diameter of a 20mm or 30mm German cannon would be @ 1/35th. I just think it doesn’t look right. Feel free to prove me wrong by calculating (which I’m sure somebody will) but, I think they should look more like this:
Your weathering and other detail is superb. The close ups of the canopy reveal quite a bit of fogging and paint hiccups on the canopy frames however, but, at 1/48th scale, I’m sure it’s not that noticeable when viewed by the eye.
I like it. It looks nice. I have heard good and bad things about that kit and will ahve to eventually do one myself. Hmmm? Me build a Fw… What do ya think?[:-^]
good so far most people like the paint/weather effect.
Ranger2seven I placed the tamiya kit in the pics because it is almost the oppsite of the dragon kit. If you don’t mind some shape and accuracy issues the tamiya kit it great. That is the jv44 kit it has the best instructions I have ever seen in a kit with a large color fold out of the jv44 190’s. Construction is easy, decals are nice, and it dose have a fair amount of detail. there are fixes out there and alot of aftermarket stuff for it as well. The dragon kit is so old it should be in a museum. It’s not hard to build it’s almost impossible to build and do it right. BUT it’s super accurate and has great detail. it’s also the only D-11 in 1/48 scale on the market in plactic.
Mucker the paint instructions on that dragon kit were written by someone who’s never seen a luftwaffe aircraft. I think he made up some of those colors (light gray-green for RLM 76?) For the upper surface I used model master acrly. The wings are light green rlm 83, and grayviolet rlm75. The body is rlm65 light blue, rlm 83 again and the tail camo is rlm 81 brownviolet.
Crocket thanks for noticing. The canopy was sat on by a cat (long story), I hate painting canopies so I left it. You have to get close to it but you can see in person it’s actually pretty bad in my book. If I every take it out I will have to replace it. The guns in the wings are over scale (good eye) by about scale 10mm. They should be 20mm but the OD of the tube is about 29mm scale mm , it’s fits in the hub cannon fine but I had to drill out the wing port to accept them. What I can’t help it your d-9 has wimpy guns. I was expecting it to turn out rougher than it did. i bascally use it as a test bed. BTW nice clean d-9 What kit is that?
I tried building that kit a few years back, and ended up using it as a paint hack, so I appreciate the effort you must have put into get it to that standard.
I have to admit I was a little hesitant to open this post because when the title says ‘61 more pics added’ and with me having dial-up, I figured it would take a long time before everything uploaded![:D]
But I’m glad I did because those are two very nice builds, and nice photographs to boot! The finish on 61 looks outstanding.
Okay, I broke down and did a little math. 20mm = .787 inches (approx.), divide this by 48, and you get .016 inches, the outer diameter of a 20mm cannon tube @ 1/48th scale. One millimeter =.039 inches, so your 20mm cannon tube DIA should measure just under .5 millimeter to be exact. Replicate the formula for 30mm(I think this is right)?
Now, please don’t misunderstand my message, this is not an “I know more than you” thing, just trying to help. I am not a rivet counter, just a FW 190 enthusiast,but if you get AM brass tube in the 1/2 mil range, you can’t go wrong in the future. The big indicator is the diameter of the 20mm firing thru the prop spinner in your pics. This looks to be about right.
I would definitely open the gear bays on future projects, this really detracts from the otherwise beautiful work on the build.
BTW, that’s the Hasegawa “barkhorn” kit. It is really nice. I also built the Tamiya kit, and chose the JV 44 scheme as well (lucky 13):
You definitely have great ability and your paint/weathering work is truly inspiring. Great job, and I’m sure your next Dora will be fantastic!
crockett your math is right, I figured it out a while ago and just know that I use that for the 30mm cannon. If I really wanted to go the full length I could have drilled out the kit parts as well (see my hartmann 109 the mechine guns in the hood are drilled out). I have built about 8 fw190’s about of them about half have open landing gear bays. All of my large scale kits 1/32 and 1/24 do. 2 of my 1/48 kits have open bays. I like the open bays better myself but did not want to go down that road on this one. Thanks for looking at my bird. fw190’s are one of my favorite aircraft as well, and any info you can give me will be helpfull. If you like 190’s watch what I have in store next.
BTW I never get bent out shape over criticism I like having descussions about the wrecks I build. I never took your post it any other way crockett. I would use smilies but this site tells me my pop up blocker that is off will not allow it to function so I don’t.
when you have good friends that do the same hobby you tend to give and take alot of friendly taunting. My fw190 brown 4 I have been told looks like a car that been hit 3 or 4 time and has different color junk yard body parts on it (can’t argue with that). But he just getting me back from placing a barney as the pilot of a WW1 plane he did that was painted purple. Hay paint it pastel purple and got to expect that. Now I have an 190 packing 5 elephent guns! caution guns in mirror are BIGGER than they appear. It’s all in good fun, you will find that I have a over active sense of humor. Off topic but I thought that this story was kinda funny and would lighten things up a bit.
