Axis Aces Sep 2006 - Jun 2007

Well it took me long enough but I was finally able to finish this one last week! Funny how life gets in the way of things. Anyway better late than never.

Thanks Darren. 

I'm very pleased with the way it turned out, in spite of the self induced glitches and the major disaster with the decals.  I can tell you one thing, I'll never again hesitate even for a second to strip and repair anything.  If I can do it with that layered white wash scheme, I can do it with anything!  What a great learning experience and skill builder that fiasco was! 

I need to work on my decal skills though...... 

Jay Bee, great work buddy, I know it is a 1/72 scale kit but until the shot with your hand shows just how tiny that kit is I really had not idea.  Very nicely done indeed .

Scotty, what can I say except congrats on finishing that bad boy.  Looking at the shots you've posted there is not way you would ever know all the problems you had with the paint job and decals.  Great job and I too am looking forward to your write-up .

Cheers 

Thanks Bob. 

I really enjoyed the kit, in spite of all my self induced problems.    I'm just glad I was able to recover from everything... man did I learn a lot! 

Finished!!!  And only about a month late! 

Here are some photos I took out on the upstairs deck.  I'll post some better ones when my portable photo booth arrives (should be here next week).  As usual, I'll do a write up soon and post it along with the good pics. 

Looks good Jay!  Glad to see you were able to finish that puppy up!  Great job!

I'm right behind you.  Everything is sealed up on my G-14, all that remains is the exhaust stains and flat coat. 

Scott, looks great, we wouldn't even be able to tell you had any issues! I really wanted to one of those for this build but this kit I did was given to me so I guess you don't look a gift horse in the mouth, if you know what I mean...

So here is my Eric Hartman Bf-109 G6 from mid 1944 I think.  This is the 1:72 Hasegawa kit with a Hawkeye resin tail and everything else oob.  Hope it stand up to the scrutiny!

I think one of the toughest things is to look at pictures of G-6 and G-14 aircraft and tell the difference between the two.  There are many mix and match characterstics that can be found on different G-6s and G-14s which makes them very hard to tell apart. 

Thanks for everyone's moral support on my G-14, you've really helped keep me going on this one.  Man, talk about some great learning experiences! 

I'm at the point now where I'm going to seal this baby up with a layer of Future.   

Looking good, espins1!  Thanks for posting that pic.  It almost looks like the props have a bit of oversprayed white near the hub, interesting.  The caption is right, it sure doesn't look like a G-6. 

I hope this GB isn't dead yet as I have only the flat coat left!  It was in a holding pattern for the last while and I finally got some time to do the wash and get some of the last bits on.  I' post finished pic of me Hartmann bf-109g in 1:72 soon!

Scott sorry to hear of your decal issues. 

Thanks Mucker.  It's been a fun build in spite of the few self induced hurdles I created for myself.   

I was able to get the two tiny decals over those ducts without too much difficulty last night.  I also drilled out the gun barrels and they're all painted and ready to go.  I'm going to do just a tiny bit of touch up with some gloss black in a few small spots where one of the tulip decals had broken apart.

I'm going to do one more coat of future to seal everything in.  I'd like to try doing a few oil, gas and hydraulic fluid leaks, spray some light exhaust stains then flat coat it. 

doh, just noticed I have a bit of finishing work to do on the black "tulip" decal work, particularly around the exhaust area.  There are several little black decals that go over those ducts.  I'm half tempted to just paint those spots since I seriously doubt those little decals will conform to the curves properly and I'm NOT even going to attempt to put any decal solutions on them.

I'm just about done with this puppy.  The machine guns have been painted, but late last night I was looking at them and have decided to drill out the ends of the gun barrels as it just look odd with solid ends in this scale.    So I'm going to attempt that this evening.  Anyone have any tips on the safest way to do that?

On another note, I had spent a lot of time trying to find pictures of white-washed Bf109 aircraft (man, there aren't many out there, seems cameras don't work to well in 20 below zero temperatures  :shock: ).  Anyway, that EagleCals decal set that I got the balkenkreuzes from had a nice 3 page fold out flyer (6 if you count front and back) which had two pictures of Hartmann's white washed 109s!   

And here we are the replacement balkenkreuz decals in place.  I got these off the EagleCals EC#36 1/32 "The Blond Knight" set.  Almost finished! 

Here are three shots right after I sprayed the fuselage tail band. 

I use Tamiya Acrylics, so as usual I had to mix the color I needed.  I used 10 parts XF-3 Flat Yellow, 5 parts X-20A Thinner, 1 part XF-2 Flat White and 1 part X-6 Orange.  I think it looks way better than the decal, even before it wrinkled like a 200 year old woman. 

Thanks Darren.  I must say I'm very relieved.  I was so discouraged after the decals freaked on me that I was ready to chuck the whole thing in the trash.  I'm glad I just walked away from it for a week or two.  I finally figured, what have I got to lose?  Worst case scenario I'll still learn a lot trying to strip the decals and how to blend together and patch up the paintwork and I can still chuck it in the trash after that.  Well, it turned out pretty good actually and looks pretty much as good as new. 

I have some extra decals that came with the kit for the non-winterized version, but the balkenkreuz decals are a bit darker than the lighter ones that go with this version.  I'm going to stop my LHS just in the off chance they have a replacement set, otherwise I'm either going to go with the other kit decals and just lightly fade them with a very light misting of some heavily thinned white or mask and spray them myself just for the learning experience, know what I mean? 

I re-sprayed the stripped and sanded areas. 

First I covered the spots with some Tamiya XF-2 Flat white with a bit of XF-24 Dark Grey and XF-50 Field Blue.  I used about a 3 to 1 ratio of paint to X-20A Thinner.  This gave me a bit of a darker white color, which is fine, as a sort of pre-shade.  I sprayed each spot and made sure it was thouroughly covered by that off white mix.

Then I did a 50/50 mix of XF-2 Flat White with X-20A Thinner, with just a drop or two of the Dark Grey and Field Blue added to slightly tint the white.  I sprayed it in the same type of random spaghetti pattern just like I did originally, and sprayed some of the mix in other open areas (had to be careful not to paint the existing decals or other painted parts) so as to blend the patched areas in with the rest of the paint job. 

I think I did a really good job patching up that paint as you almost can't even tell there was ever any problem!  Whew! 

Well guys, I finally managed to overcome my extreme discouragement after the decal fiasco on the upper wings and fuselage sides. 

I tried using a combination of almost hot water, q-tips and even some decal softener.... no dice, they were still extremely reluctant to be scraped, rubbed or pealed off.  I finally resorted to about an hour and a half of very delicate sanding with sanding sticks to gently remove them.    Thank goodness I have lots of great History and Military channel stuff recorded on the DVR that I've been meaning to get to. 

I'm getting ready to do a light spray of the white (mixed with a drop or two of gray) to repair the paint job.  I'll have to to a light spray of the RLM76 on the underside where the yellow fuselage band was removed.

I have a couple of sprare decals which I think should be ok to lay down on the wings and fuselage.  I'll have to do a very light mist coat of white over them though as the original decals had a faded look to them.  

Ya, I always use a coat of Future before decaling, even on tanks.