1/48 Tamiya Fw-190-D9

by Dean Large

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Oooo-kay, it’s another FW 190. Seems to be about the most popular modelling subject these days, and with the quality of Tamiya kits to swoon over, no wonder. With their kits you only have to sneeze on the sprues, and all the parts fly off and rearrange themselves into a reasonable facsimile of the plane in question. I felt like having a rest after my previous builds, so I went to the stash and pulled out one of the first models I bought when I returned to the hobby a couple of years ago. It had been sitting on a window sill in direct sunlight for most of that time, so the box top artwork had some pretty unusual colour renditions! Good job I didn’t need to refer to that too much.  

The quality of this kit lived up to expectations, and made for a relaxing build. As I was finishing the thing, I couldn’t be bothered opening the glue, as the cowling, engine, propeller, cowl flaps, rear stabilisers and gear doors are a press fit. The only problem area was with the wing root/fuselage joint, which left a gap. I solved the problem with Milliput, but I’ve since read that others have placed a spreader bar inside the fuselage below the cockpit to widen it, and ensure that it meets the wing roots. Great idea, only wish I’d read about it before I did the whole putty / sanding / rescribing thing!

The cockpit was helped out with an Eduard PE set, which I thought I’d try in the pre-painted form. (I bought this kit a while ago remember, and all the aftermarket stuff overwhelmed me somewhat at the time.) As far as pre-painted stuff goes, forget it! It was nice for the side consoles and the instruments, where all the fiddly little details were a treat, but when it came to the seatbelts – bend them into shape and the paint just flakes off! I ended up junking them and using bare PE belts which I painted myself. Serves me right for cheating. The cockpit was a nice job, but when installed and with only the narrow canopy opening to peer through, you can see precisely bugger all. I’ve included a photo of the tub before it went inside so that my work will not have been in vain.

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I tried out a new idea around the filler cap of the belly tank – I blobbed on some black pastel wash solution, and blew it around with air from the airbrush, mainly in the direction of the airflow. It looks like the overspill from the fuel filling operation has run down the side of the tank and mixed with grime. I was quite pleased with the result. I remember doing something similar with paint and straws when I was about 5 years old at school – amazing the stuff that they used to teach you that turns out to be useful!

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Next on the list to experiment with was preshading. Never done that before, although I have had problems caused by it when topcoating over two different coloured primers. I went over all the panel lines in semi-gloss black, and then topcoated the Tamiya recommended mixture of acrylics over this. The underside light blue/grey responded well, and I remembered the advice I read on the web “it should not be obvious to the casual observer that the model has been preshaded at all.” To that end, I stopped when the effect almost disappeared, but sadly not in time on the top surfaces. The green and grey camo pattern simply obliterated the preshaded lines. I had the same problem on the fuselage sides when I had to repaint them due to a self induced cock up with the mottling. The mottling was done freehand with my airbrush, so I’m growing in confidence all the time. In the end, I glossed the whole thing with Johnson’s, and then did my usual chalk pastel panel line wash, black for the darker areas and brown for the lighter areas and the wheel wells. When I was adding exhaust stains and gunsmoke residue with the airbrush, I did lightly go over some of the panel lines on the rear fuselage to see what would happen, and wasn’t too dissatisfied with the result. So, this model has a mixture of preshading, postshading and pastel washing. Talk about multiple choice!

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Decalling was a problem, though. The huge decal for the fuselage theatre band was never going to conform – a flat shape onto that set of compound curves? No chance - I tried it both ways round, cut it into two lengthways, everything. My admiration grows for those in the gallery pages who’ve managed to get it to settle, although I did get the spinner spiral to work.  I could have painted the bands, but they should have gone on first, as putting them on now over those base colours would have created such a thick layer of paint that the step at the edge would be visible, so I decided that warplanes don’t need bright colours compromising their camouflage schemes! I was going to do Blue 15, but the decal sheet seemed to have been abraded somehow and the 15 was scuffed. I went with Black 12 instead. I mean, apart from you and me, who’s going to know...?

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I did the usual brake-lines-from-wire scratchbuilding, fashioned the springs on the retract struts from coiled wire, and replaced the loop antenna with wire too. I drilled out the ends of the gun barrels and was amazed that I went through the entire building, painting and decaling process without breaking them off! The radio antenna was from stretched sprue, inserted through tiny holes drilled in the canopy, headrest, fuselage spine and the radio mast on the fin. To get it the right length, I fixed it in place with the canopy closed and then opened the canopy expecting the same amount of play as I’ve seen on other Doras. Nowhere near as much sag on mine, but I’ll live with it as I know that it’s factual. Getting the sprue to sag convincingly was hard work, and it’s still not quite right now. There’s only so much you can do, though.

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All in all, an enjoyable build. I’ve experimented with a few new techniques, some of which worked, some of which didn’t. I know there are LOADS of 190 afficionados out there who can pick holes in my model until the cows come home, but please don’t. I’m the sensitive type… ;-)  

Dean

Photos and text © by Dean Large