I wrapped up work on my latest yesterday, Revell’s Junkers Ju188A-2 “Racher” - German for Avenger.
The kit is a repop of an older Dragon mold. My experience with Dragon molds has been hit and miss. I missed on a Revell Mistel boxing, finding the Fw190 kit to be unbuildable. I ended up pitching the 190 in the trash and replacing it with an ancient boxing of Monogram’s Butcher Bird to complete that project. Many years ago, I was excited to get my first kit ever of the Junkers Ju88 (A-4 variant), from Monogram Pro-Modeler. I had no problems whatsoever with that build. I am guessing the Dragon Junkers 88 family of molds were pretty good, as I was also able to get the 188 together with only a few problems.
The problems I had with this build were mostly related to Revell’s instruction booklet not being clear about the placement of parts. For instance, the bomb racks. There were indentations inside the wings where you have to drill the mounting holes, but the indentations were not well defined. The instructions show placing two racks per wing, but are not clear where they should go, so I used those indentations as my guide. Welp, that turned out to be a mistake. The racks ended up too far forward. This was a cascading mistake when it came time to attach the engine cowlings. These engines feature long exhaust stacks that flare out at the end; the outer bomb racks prevented proper alignment of the cowlings to the wheel well nacelles. I ended up solving the problem by cutting away most of the mounting tabs on the inboard exhaust stacks, which gave me just enough room to align the cowlings properly.
The anti-sway bar were not marked well, either, and I ended up with one set with a fatter mount on the wrong rack. I also opted not to bother with antenna rigging since there was no part for the mast, and I had some concerns over the little clear parts where some of the rigging is to go falling into the fuselage.
I chose a scheme that appeared to be a field applied modification of a typical Luftwaffe splinter paint job. The colors are all AK Interactive 3G acrylics - RLM02 for the struts and wheel bays, RLM66 for the interior and tires, RLM70 for the props, spinners, and some of the splinter scheme, RLM71 for the splinter scheme, and RLM76 for the field-applied light blue. The underside is Tamiya acrylics flat black. I weathered with Flory washes and a bit of ground pastels. I used a Montex Mask for all that glass.
Having done two Luftwaffe subjects this year (both of the Junkers 88 family), I’m pretty much done looking at German paint schemes for the year. Next up will be a trio build of Grumman cats - Wildcat, Hellcat, and Tigercat, all in 72nd scale.