Build review IBG Models Fw 190 Dora-9 (Cottbus, early production) - finished

 

 ..first completion of 2022. IBG Models Fw 190 Dora-9. Great kit, loads of detail and options and fit was good for such a 'complex' kit. Finished as 'black 3' of 6./JG 26 with Xtracolor enamels.

A few views of the build, including the detailed cockpit and engine

.. building the IBG Models Fw 190 Dora-9 - in-box review/build Part 2

 

 The first new-tool IBG Models Fw 190 Dora-9 arrived a few weeks ago. The D-15 is released as well. I assume the D-11/13 is due later. A quick look at what's in the box. 

 

 

Part 1 of this build was posted on FalkeEins Luftwaffe blog here

The first half of the build involves construction of the cockpit and engine and the installation of these two components/elements into the fuselage halves.  Parts are so finely molded that this is all achieved in relatively straight forward steps. The trickiest stage of the build is removing the parts from the sprues and cleaning them up.

Once the fuselage halves are together the lower wing part clips into place and the firewall spar forms the back wall of the undercarriage wells. Again alignment is pretty hassle free. 

Stage 14 shows how the wells are built up with the photo etch parts, certainly the trickiest part of the build for me. 

A view of the completed wells which shows the 'see-through' effect as on the actual machine. The finely molded engine is more or less visible here, although the upper cowl MGs are not.

Prepping the completed build for painting. A little PPP required in the wing join. The control surfaces are all separate parts. There is a choice of four different canopy styles in the box - or are two of them spares?

The defence of the Reich bands are painted and masked and the RLM 76 applied (Xtracolor enamels) This view shows the superb rivet detail on the main parts -  the finish achieved by the mold maker. is superlative.  The flash has obliterated the pre-shading. 

Modelling nostalgia with the vintage FROG Focke Wulf Ta 152 H

I guess for those of us 'oldies' quite a lot of what we do in modelling nowadays is driven by 'nostalgia'. It has become something of trend on forums everywhere to revisit some of those golden oldies from the 1970s and 1980s; ‘a kit you built as a kid’ group build was running a while back on Britmodeller. I more or less remember tackling all of those kits in their day. Mainly because there wasn’t any internet and whatever the local newsagents or Woolworths had in stock was what you built back then. Although I always remember 'Airfix Magazine' arriving through the letterbox on Saturday morning each month and devoured Alan Hall's and Bryan Philpott's model builds - especially those Ju 88 nightfighter and Bf 109 conversions from Bryan Philpott. Of course parents and relatives were always ready to buy you a model kit since no doubt they saw it as a constructive way for a child to spent his time, same with books. No doubt one of the reasons why I've ended up with a huge collection of books ..and unbuilt models. I well recall building the Airfix 24 scale Harrier in about a fortnight aged twelve years old. I doubt if I could do anything like that today!

Still living the nostalgia. I saw a lovely thread elsewhere on BM where the modeller stated that what he liked doing was simply building what was in the box. No additions or new parts or vacuform canopy or after-market of any description - you just build what is in the box. Just to remind yourself how much fun it is not worrying about washes, detailing and all the other things we now tend to have to have these days in our modelling lives, living in an era of 'super' kits and hi-grade aftermarket.

But Airfix was the staple of those days and in the last couple of years before other interests took me away from the hobby around 1978/79 my passion was building Luftwaffe kits. This coincided with the discovery in the local library of William Green's massive "Warplanes of the Third Reich" book. It was a book full of exotic machines and far too valuable to be loaned out of the library - you were allowed to study it in a special room and I still recall spending at least one set of summer holidays taking copious notes from it into a small notepad - aged about 11 or 12. Well-known author and Classic Publications founder Robert Forsyth told me that his interest in the Luftwaffe was stimulated in similar fashion - but he actually got his mum to buy him a copy of 'Warplanes..' ! Who knew then that this huge tome would be so decried nowadays by the Experten.

Frog models featured a lot in my youth - their Blackburn Shark and Barracuda kits I remember well. One of the vintage kits I built back then was the 1970-release of the FROG Ta 152. I would have been around 10 or 11 when I first built this kit. Of course this original FROG kit has been re-boxed by Revell and is still easily available. I built mine a while ago but having a box of Eduard Fw 190 spare bits to hand I have been 'inspired' to do up my old FROG model.

This is the finished model. I've tried to update it a little. The engine cowl has had plastic card gill's added and a etch grille in the top section. The otherwise completely smooth nose and upper fuselage parts have been scribed and the canopy/late war head armour and wheels are Eduard left-overs. A gear bay has been built and gear retraction jacks added. along with foot-step and a FuG aerial. There is even a half-decent cockpit tub with side panels, instrument panel and control column in there. The armament has been replaced with metal rod. Aerial wire from GS-Hypo Cement - a new tube so very fine, barely visible. Decals from the Kagero "JG 301" Air Miniatures book - 'green 4' is the Stab./JG 301 machine supposedly flown by Walter Loos in the last few weeks of the war. Paints are Xtracolor and Colourcoats enamels - reading my reference it would appear that there is no known camouflage 'plan' for the Ta 152, but mine is taken from the Eagle Monarch book on the type, who incidentally don't feature Loos' 'green 4' but do illustrate an all-red machine, which in my view was probably an 'invention' of the vets for a little 'fun' at some-one's expense ...

"highly detailed and accurate model built for sale " - built models sold on Ebay

There are a fair amount of built models offered for 'sale and display' on ebay. I'm not sure I could ever part with some of mine like that but there are plenty of people who have no qualms about offering their latest 'creations' for sale.  At first sight this one is neatly finished for example;

  " ..A beautifully finished 1/72 scale model of the Focke Wulf FW 190 A-4 as flown Maj. Walter Dahl, Stab/JG 300, Jüterbog, Germany, December 1944 with some light weathering to depict in service use..."

"...its built to a high standard.... Guns are realistically hollow and the propeller rotates by simply blowing gently on it!..Compare this to many others with crude finishes and poor paintwork currently on eBay...."


Unlike this guy I feel a little uncomfortable about criticising the work of other modellers. But, well, I can't help but point out that this is the Zvesda snap-fit Fw 190 A-4 kit as the modeller acknowledges himself. Walter Dahl was of course NOT flying an A-4 in December 1944  but an A-8 with the bulged cowl MG cover (..larger calibre guns of course....) and with the fuselage extension of the later Fw 190 variants. ( I guess we won't mention the absence of the outer wing MGs, the upper wing bulges, the grossly over-scale head armour and support, the 'unpainted' cooling gills of the BMW radial etc etc..).

Of course as an Experte (note spelling and capital letter..) I can't help but 'whine' about details like this. And while the model sales pitch above could be seen as no more 'accurate' than plenty of others out there on ebay the model sold for £99 ! ....so good luck to him I guess. And here's one of those examples referred to above...which incidentally is posted up by Ebay at the bottom of the 'Dahl' modeller's own auction! ..That must be irksome! At least the write-up tells it like it is ...

"...A 1/72 scale assembled painted model of a Focke-Wulf 190 aircraft...

Assembly has imperfections, a ridge along the fuselage joint, some glue marks, undercarriage is off upright. The prop turns and is a loose fit. Paintwork has some marks on the underside.

Except for the central bomb, the aircraft appears to be complete, although some smaller details may be snapped off/not present...."


My own build of the Zvezda Fw 190 A-4 'snap-fit' kit is here

Eduard & Revell new issue Fw 190 A-8/R2

Box-art by Piotr Forkasiewicz for the new Eduard 1/48 scale ProfiPACK Edition kit of German fighter aircraft Focke-Wulf Fw 190 A-8/R2 (cat. no. 82145) released June 2019. Markings research by this blog for Eduard. Hans Weik's machine pictured on the 18 July 1944 Memmingen airfield raid..

New issue 32nd scale Sturmbock A-8/R2 from Revell. Unbeatable value for the money. Markings research assistance to Andreas Klein for Revell provided by this blog.

Hobbyboss Fw 190 V-18 build in box review (3)

Despite my gross 'hamfistedness' in a number of areas my Hobbyboss Fw 190 V-18 is almost at the decaling stage...nice kit, albeit somewhat inaccurate in a number of areas, especially the cockpit which appears to be a little over-size and rather toy-like..

..and Gary 'old Sarge' - if you're reading this, thanks very much for the comments, really appreciate you dropping in here regularly. I'm writing this here since I don't seem to be able to comment on your excellent blog posts on your blog. Unfortunately I don't know why, but rest assured I always drop in and would suggest anyone else reading this and not familiar with Gary's 'old sarges aircraft' go straight over to his bit of the internet here

Hobbyboss Fw 190 V-18 build in box review (2), stash additions Tamiya Bf 109 G-6, Eduard Royal Class Fw 190 early versions - 48th

Still not really convinced by the Hobbyboss V-18, but it has assembled easily enough and finishing is underway. First coat of Humbrol's 'new' RLM 02 - very thin poor coverage, needs a second coat. And while I had the RLM 66 in the airbrush I started painting the cockpit parts of two fantastic new additions to the stash - the Eduard Royal Class Fw 190 'early versions' and the Tamiya Bf 109 G-6.

 Yes, the new Tamiya Bf 109 G-6 was about twice the price of an Eduard 48th 109, but then the pound sterling isn't worth much against any of these currencies nowadays! Worth getting though - it really does appear to be on another level in terms of plastic kit 'engineering' as you can see from the youtube build below (via 'Andy's hobby Shop')

Hobbyboss Focke Wulf Fw 190 V18 - 48th

So Hobbyboss have produced an 1:18th scale Fw 190. It looks terrible, very toy-like. Not much better is this one which landed on my bench early last year. I've picked it up again recently. The Focke Wulf Fw 190 V-18 was an attempt to produce a high altitude fighter prototype using the DB 603 in-line bomber engine which featured an enormous Hirth exhaust-driven turbocharger located under the fuselage - ultimately an example of failed rather than innovative German engineering! While it could manage 400+ mph at 31,000 ft, it could only do it intermittently. The V-18/U1 was fitted with the broad Ta 152 tail-fin and the supercharged DB 603 drove a large four-bladed prop - makes for an 'exotic' looking machine and I guess we should be glad that a reasonable replica is available in kit form and not just as some short-run resin.

The problem with this kit is that it doesn't know which variant it really wants to be. It doesn't help that the box-art is rather more detailed than the kit itself, which lacks the Hirth turbocharger exhaust fairings on the fuselage and upper wing. There's only one or two builds of this kit out on the net. One 'John Miller' has a very nice build on a few sites. I've borrowed his pic of the cockpit (looks decidedly oversized) and supercharger engine detail alongside as I didn't take a picture of mine before hiding it away.

John reckons the biggest issue is the nose cowl with its two large intakes that weren't present on the V18 (easily filled in and faired over). That said I notice that the Fw 190 V15 prototype which trialed the exhaust pipes had these intakes and did not have the fairings, so perhaps the Hobbyboss kit designers got their variants mixed up. There are more curious omissions and inclusions on the kit. But there is no armoured head-rest on the real machine above, John. That was introduced later in development. One tip I've picked up from John's build is the area of heavy riveting underneath the cockpit. The exhaust-driven turbocharger unit is included but can only be seen through the rather bare and open wheel well. The large open rear cockpit decking will be covered with some Eduard etch. Still the grau/alu finish looks quite striking, just remains to be seen if it builds into a reasonable replica.

Box and sprue views here