I have not posted on here in a long while, but I have been watching and must say that there is some outstanding 190's being displayed here. Love the French scheme, clean and tons of depth, yellow 10 is impressive - I doubt I have the skill with my AB to complete that scheme.
I had signed up for a third, it was the Hobby Boss Ta-152 C1/R14, and now that life has settled down a bit I can post my pics. While reading up on the R14 version, I discovered that it was designed on paper and never made it to production, however there were several R31's on the books at JG301 near the close of the war. No pictures are known of the aircraft so any markings are purely speculative. I did also note that the R14 had the cowl guns removed for weight/CG purposes where as the R31 maintained the 4 20mm guns as well as the one firing through the spinner. Armed with this I determined to build this kit as an R31, but not necessarily from JG301.
The Box:
After Market Decals:
Build pics:
As you can see, the rear of the engine is lacking some of the details that the Eduard kit has and is mounted too far forward.
Used the kit decal for the Instrument Panels and side panels, then forgot to take pictures prior to install:
Very easy assembly and only needed a small spreader bar below the cockpit near the wing trailing edge to reduce the gap to virtually nil.
Cockpit glass sealed in future prior to the masking and glued in place with superglue. Rear glass tacked in place for painting.
One of the major flaws in the kit. Notice the lip from the wing root inside the wheel wells and the noted absence of the components near the firewall.
Aircraft was primed with Tamiya gray primer and painted in the scheme matching the JG 301 aircraft. Once the basic paint was complete I decided to not add the red/yellow bands and basically create my own markings.
Sorry no in progress pictures of the painting. But I will say the sides and bottom are RLM 84 (color of eagles brand) and the top is RLM 75 (Gray violet) and RLM 83 (light Green) with a light coat of 82 (dark green), all Polly Scale acrylic, for color variations. The Natural Metal on the bottom is Hawkeyes Talon Acrylic NMF paint with panels highlighted with his rub-n-buff powder. First time I have used that paint an it turned out great!
I did not pre-shade (primed then forgot really) so attempted to use light coats to build up color as needed. Once the top colors were applied, I went back over the fuselage sides with RLM 84 and a brand new fine needle/nozzle to clean everything up.
Then the normal gloss coat (future), decaling, followed by an artists oil wash and selected dry brushing.
here is another look at the fouled up details in the wheel well area, it screams for AM goodies!
the AM decal set also provided the decals for wood grain flaps
All that remains now is to add the exhaust staining and add the flat coat. I still need to add the PE shoulder harnesses and headrest to the cockpit as well as the last antenna.
Hope you like it, feel free to comment/critique .
Happy thanksgiving,
Matt