new tool 1:72nd Airfix Wessex HC. 2 build review (1)

Now that the replacement sprue has arrived from Airfix (yes, see above - an entire sprue was missing from the sealed, bagged kit!) I can get on with the build of my 'Walter'!

Note on the internal painting of the cabin - blue seats and pea green on the sound quilting. You could usefully add some belt detail, but I have not. Grime it up a bit with an oil wash and a bit of dry-brushing. Good details, including the interior frame and the heating duct, but 27 build stages before closing up the fuselage is probably asking for trouble. 

In the cockpit Airfix provide a choice of instrument panels, one with raised detail or a flat part with decal. Shame that the decal doesn't really look like the real thing. Colour call-outs for the cockpit parts are non-existent - I've done mine in a dark grey, but should probably be black. Note the prominent windscreen wiper motors on the framing behind the panel.

Fitting the cockpit and the cabin roof is fiddly and a very tight fit! A fair bit of fettling required ..and then - despite the okay-ish dry-fit - I couldn't get the fuselage halves together around the nose.  I had this issue on the 48th P-51. Despite this, the fit of the windscreen/canopy is not bad, but might need a little sanding to avoid a 'step'. The canopy will take some time to mask - but certainly no worse than a Ju 88! 

Sprue attachment points are very large and usually on the mating surfaces which makes clean-up a little tricky. Otherwise another notable point about the kit is the tremendous amount of surface detailing - hoist power feed sockets, power take-off points down the fuselage under the pilots door etc. The so-called 'beetle-back' is well done and the prominent cooling louvres are featured after a fashion. Airfix have also moulded the cutouts for those drain points at the forward edge. The representation of the mesh covers is pretty well done and there is a basic gearbox with torque links. 

Folded or flying options are available, folded looks neat with the cradle attachment in bright red.

More soon...

1:72 MPM Fw 189 C/V-6

Luftwaffe enthusiasts spend a lot of their time (I would imagine) lauding the brilliant designs and innovative engineering of much of the Third Reich's aeronautical output. Only there were a lot of 'duds' among them. And, despite the fearsome MPM box-top art, the Fw 189 C/V-6 was just one of these.

First flown in early 1940 the C/V-6 was the 'ground-attack' variant of the Fw 189 with the original fuselage nacelle replaced with an armour-plated 'nacelle-type' structure for a pilot and rear gunner. Both crew members had strictly limited views outside of the machine. The aircraft was powered by two Argus inverted V-12's of around 460 hp each. By way of comparison, the Hs 129 had two 691 hp Gnome-Rhone engines, while on the Allied side, for example, the Bristol Beaufighter and Douglas A-20 both had twin engines of 1600 hp. That the Germans would design aircraft around the Argus V-12s and French-made Gnome-Rhone radials obviously indicates the limitations of their aircraft engine production. The Germans did not have high-horsepower engines available in the quantities the Allies could produce. The smaller engines resulted in severely under-powered machines but did at least have the advantage of being of small profile. The Germans did of course have warehouses full of captured engine stocks that they wanted to use, some obviously state-of-the-art… in 1937. This resulted in many unsupportable design compromises..

The Fw 189 C/V-6 was entered into the competition for a new ground-attack/close-support aircraft that the Henschel Hs129 eventually won, the unconventional Blohm-und-Voss Bv 141 having already been eliminated due to its unproven asymmetrical form. Two prototypes of the -C were manufactured for testing, the V-1b and the V-6. The V-6 was designed to be armed with two MG FF 20mm cannon and four MG 17's firing forward and a twin MG 81Z for the rear gunner. The rear armament was optimistic at best given the gunner's restricted field of vision, especially when compared to the original Fw 189.

The kit was a straight forward build albeit rather lacking in detail - no gun barrels (I used Master), no bombs or racks - which I intend adding from an old Airfix Fw 190 kit. And the glazed parts of the cabin - except for the windscreen- were solid and had to be cut out.  The best part of the build for me was exhuming some old unused Aeromaster 'Warbirds' acrylics from the back of the paint 'stash' which I used for the 70/71 segmented finish - they went on beautifully, despite being, what, 30-40 years old?! Whatever happened to these paints and why has no-one kept the formula in production?