After having put my Eduard Emil on hold, having been dissatisfied with my brush-applied mottling, I decided to try a Tamiya kit. Having done some research on the Luftwaffe, I found out that Geschwaderkommando as well as II Gruppe of JG 52 stayed about 20km from where I live for a couple of weeks in spring 1940. Since the planes back then were still painted in 65/02/71 with no mottling, I decided to build a plane from 6./52, in particular the plane of Staffelkapitän Lederer. I found AM decals for Y3 of that Staffel, but I guess I can “kitbash” decals to do the Y1 machine. I must say the Tamiya kit is really nice, well engineered, especially the cowling area is a lot easier than the eduard one. I also learned from some mistakes with the first kit and spot-glued the cowling in order to remove it after all the painting and weathering in order to glue in the guns. I also tried my hand at scratch-building brake-lines on the landing gear using thin wire. Painting is pretty much done, I’ll have to apply a gloss coat now in order to apply decals and try oil-color washing the panel lines. I’ll keep you updated…
Hello, good to see this one off and running, looks great so far!
regards,
Jack
Hey thats some great work. Glad you found an appropriate scheme.
Thans for your coments so far. Decals arrived today. I spotted some spelling mistakes on the stencils, but I’ll use Tamiya’s stencils anyway. Hope they got their German right… Gloss varnish has been applied, so after one or two days of drying, it’s on to decalling…
Looking great so far!
Looks good thus far, keep it going.
Still waiting for gloss to dry thoroughly. I’ve been looking for info on the inside-color of the extended slats and flaps. I reckon 65 on the underside and 02 on the upperside is correct enough… If anyone’s got other info, like for the “parts which connect the slats to the wing” (for lack of correct word?)… Also, the black eagle emblem of 6./52 is not really correct on printscale decals, I’m wondering if I should dare some touching up with 65 once it’s applied. Unfortunately I don’t think I could completely freehand it or use some form of masking… 
I put the above image into Photoshop CS4 and from what I can tell using the pick color tool, the slat area color is pretty dang close to a match with the landing gear struts. I am guess those were done in RLM02 right?
By the way, great looking build!![Y]
02 in slat bays. You can’t see the linkage arms that attach the slats to the wing.
Nice Emil. The Tamiya example is very nice and practically builds themself. Its not quite as detailed as the Eduard kit though. Too bad you can’t splice the two for the definitive Emil. I can’t wait to see the finished model and thanks for sharing.
Joe
Argh! Struggling with those too-thick Tamiya decals. Should have used the AM ones from the start. Is there a way to remove decals once they’ve been soaked in Microsol several times and dried? Or should I leave them on? They’re not setting right into panel-lines. Had to slice 'em a bit to make them lie flat… Not happy…
Yeah those Tamiya decals are not fragile by any stretch. Have you ever used Solvaset?
No. I thought it I was lucky enough to find MicroSet/Sol over here at a store.
Just had a look at the model: it’s ok. I just put the Balkenkreuze on yesterday. They blend in pretty well after all. But I’ll use the Printscale decals for the rest…
Solvaset or Gunze Mr. Mark Softer is great for Tamiya or Hasegawa decals. Let us know how the Printscale decals preform. I’m itching to buy a set for my Yak 9, but don’t wanna buy em if there no good.
Will do. They look thinner on paper already. Though as I said, the stencil text in German has some mistakes.
The Printscale decals ARE mighty thin. So much so that I had a “1” (and several other thin, long decals) roll up on itself and I had to “build” a new “1” out of parts or a yellow bar decal. Definitely for less inexperienced modelers, I’d say. But good.
Cool, thanks for the info.
The Balkenkreuze are Tamiya decals
The repaired “1” decal