Airfix 1/24 Fw 190 A-7

[Kostucha]

Mark..my spit is nothign more than great engineering on Tamiya's part and decent paint job. Yours is all elbow grease and imagination.

Keep it up!!!!

by the way..how are things on the SeaKing front??

Sean

Thanks Sean!

Still on course - looking at either LRP (Aurora's) or MH (Seakings) - but I wont find out until about the very end of June. Things are going very well though - don't get me wrong. Just need to keep my nose to the grind stone and soon enough I'll know what I'll be doing.

[Kostucha]

Last night I got a lot of the body sanding work done - while it was drying I also got the 501 and drop tank finished - may as well use that time. I'll have pictures up of that later on tonight.

All that is left now is to finish off some sanding along one wing root, scribe in the rivets and panel lines, construct the main structure in the engine compartment and paint that, mask off and paint the body colours. I'll be fairly busy this weekend working on the Barracuda, so likely that a lot of the painting is going to be done through next week.

After that, it's a short list with one big project. What I'm looking at:

-Sand wing root/rescribe rivets and panel lines

-finish the engine compartment structure and paint

-finish the wheel wells and paint

-build up the main landing gear

-make the Revi gunsight, mount it, and mask and prep the canopies

-paint the body/markings (will all be painted on), stencils, weathering

-mount the landing gear

-mount the 501 with drop tank

-build up plumming in the engine compartment with the 2 MG's mounted there

-finish off the BMW 801 and mount it

-final details (gun barrels, antenna)

-have a few beers and that's that.

Later on down the road I will make a display case for the 190, and keeping all the panels, prop, cooling disc, etc, they'll all be placed in there - for now though they're not a concer. Just a big ole BMW 801 naked with the prop shaft exposed showing what's forward of the firewall.

Like I said, more to come soon, pictures tonight.

Mark.

[Isaac]

Wow you have some work ahead of yourself. Do the beers come at the end or the beginning? I'm trying to muster up the motivation to work on my build. I'm hitting a lull.

[HOLMES]

Mark,

She looks mighty fine and ready for the Surgeons knife !!

GO for it !! ;)

[Kostucha]

CRAP! CRAP! CRAP!

Well, she's not getting done. In my attempts to put in the wing root panels for the cannons, I heard a snap. Thinking it was something along the wing, I looked around, then looked up on the spine... the tension from the wing, with a little pressure, snapped the upper joint of the fuselage. Thinking not too much of it, just glue back in place, I took a quick boo inside the cockpit - the cockpit puttle apart (the floor came off the RH side, and the RH console stayed glued to the fuselage half).

Rather than slapping it together and ruining a perfectly good effort, I'm going to take a break from building kits, focus on the last few weeks of the course. Maybe plug away here and there on some of the smaller 1/48's... or I might crack open that Mosquito kit over the weekend.

Right now though, I'm just going to take a bit of a breather - it's this dammed 1/24 scale curse. First the Stuka, now the 190. Well, the Stuka's not really a curse, it was just a bad move and waiting for a couple of parts - the rest of the kit is ready to go pretty much. The 190, I'll likely pull front end off (the firewall) and try and reattach everything from the front without having to split the fuselage apart any further. But, I'll wait on that one. Not the end of the world. Just really disappointed.

NUTS!

[The Mikester]

Mark, sorry to hear that, we've all been there! I agree with you though, sometimes you need to step back and take a breather especially with all the work you've got invested in this one.

[General der Flieger]

G'day all. I'm new to the forum, but bumped into the thread whilst looking for info on a 1/24 Ta-152 build. Excuse me if I'm butting in on this great project, but I went down the same road as Mark last year, building up an Eastern Front A-5, so I thought I'd share a couple of pics.

The kit I built was the MPC kit, which is really just the same. And reading through the posts I know exactly about the engine cowling dramas that need to be dealt with. For me the most difficult aspects of the build were replicating the cooling fins in each cylinder head (hard to see in the pics, but trust me - they're there!) and being an A5, replicating the waffle pattern on the insides of the cowling panels. Other fun moments were thinning overly-thick panels, scratch building cowling fasteners and trying to shape & fit the scratch built exhaust pipes into what was an already crammed engine.

Pics don't show it, but I scratch built an entirely new instrument panel & seat as the kit ones are dreadful and conducted some fairly major surgery on the cockpit. The hull access panel was opened, displaying the oxy-tanks, FuG radio set, master compass etc. Although I detailed opened fuel access panels, I didn't take it as far as Mark and left the flaps, MG ammo panels and tail panels all closed. After nine moths of building I had had enough!

Being worried the FW190 would be damaged by curious fingers, I mad my first attempt at a diorama to keep onlookers at bay. For me the two most valuable resources for the build were the Aero Detail FW190 book, and a BWM Engine installation & maintenance (alas in German) manual that I purchased on E-bay.

All I can say is good luck and don't give up now after the setback! I had my moments with this one too, and several times it nearly took its' first and last flight out the garage door. If I can help at all with the build........just say so!