Tamiya Focke Wulf Fw190D-9 JV44 1/48

My latest is a Dora (but not an explorer) from Tamiya - the Focke Wulf Fw190D-9.

I had built a Dora by Monogram Pro-Modeler a few years ago, but the paint scheme featured on the box art was irresistable.  I was a bit dumb-founded by the attention gathering underside of red with white stripes until I actually read about this squadron.  The underside was painted this way for a very good reason, as P-51s were ambushing the otherwise difficult to dogfight Me262s upon landing or taking off.  The red and white provided easy identification from ground-based gunners. 

The kit provides decals for the white stripes, but I opted to paint them instead.  The top side paint I used came from a Vallejo set for late war Luftwaffe subjects.  I used Mission Models Paints for the underside.

Tamiya has a well-earned reputation as producing the best kits, but one complaint I have on many of their 48th scale subjects is that damn decal for the seat harness.  That thing is just ridiculous.  So I did some online browsing until I found something new to me, a 3D decal set made by Quinta Studios.  These are decals and function exactly like the decals we find in all of these kits we like to build, but they literally appear 3D. They are attached with white glue.  The cockpit has some nice details with that Quinta Studios set.

This kit goes together like a typical Tamiya kit, although I did have some difficulty attaching the lower wing to the fuselage (despite having no issues when I dry-fitted that part).

Next up I plan to finish out my Thunderbolt family with Dora Wings' 1/48 P-43 Lancer with previous builds earlier this year of the P-35 and the P-47.