DNF :-( Revell 1/72 Ju 88 A-4 LT and Ju 88 A-4... but got close :-)

[Mottlemaster]

Good idea putting the two into one build thread as it saves time on photographing and more time for modelling. Looking good

[rob85]

Looking very clear work V-P. Need to crack on with a few builds so I can start mine.... In the mean time yours is great reference!

Rob

[vppelt68]

Thanks Rob, I've learned a lot from Arnolds' build so let's raise our collective consciousness, or whatever the wise people say 😆.

One thing to watch and is one aileron end - there's just no room for locating tabs that are both "male" and thus need to be cut from both halves. Nothing bigger though. Regards, V-P

[rob85]

Cheers for the heads up, I shall also be tagging along on Arnold's build with the hope to pick up some tips

Rob

[vppelt68]

I´m posting of the modest progress I made last evening. Still haven´t touched a paintbrush or got back to adding bits to the cockpit, though!

I may be brave and/or stupid but as I´m a firm believer in joining plastic before it´s painted I added a few tiny bits to rear fuselage and wings. Recommended build sequence in the instructions - who reads them anyway? I wanted to build the landing gear struts before the nacelles are built around them. Revell supplies a perfect jig for building them, so i cut and cleaned all necessary parts, added the main tower to its locating holes, then the rear strut to its three points (two in lg bay roof, one in main strut) and finally added the oleo scissors. Voilá, no need to build them separately or inside the darkness of the nacelles! Regarding the fact that now most of all that will be painted in one single colour, why paint first and then build it?

I also added the flaps and ailerons with their actuators. Below the rear fuselage I added the laundry rail antennas, as the locating holes I did were a tad too big and I needed to fill them after the rails were in place. This took place conveniently from the inside, with my favourite, thin Vallejo white putty. I also found out that I should´ve believed Arnie; the way I had opened the locating holes, the antennas were too far apart and it looked really bad. So, quick fix was needed; the first locating tabs of the rear antenna were cut and the parts moved 1/2 length forward. They still aren´t correct but at least they look a lot better than the first location...

Regards, V-P

[smuts]

Looks great,c

Andy

Edited May 23, 2016 by smuts

[lyn]

looking good

[vppelt68]

Thanks all! It just appears that I´ve opened the wrong holes for the torpedo racks. In Zvezda A-17 instructions they tell you to open the outer holes for both A-17 and A-5, and the inner ones for A-5 only (for four racks). It looks to me that that the A-4 Torps had the PVC racks (what does that PVC stand for, by the way?) closer to fuselage than the engine nacelles. Filling those wrong holes isn´t difficult, locating the proper positions is now that the wings are closed... Anybody got unbuilt Revell wings so the distance between the holes could be measured? V-P

[Mottlemaster]

Thanks all! It just appears that I´ve opened the wrong holes for the torpedo racks. In Zvezda A-17 instructions they tell you to open the outer holes for both A-17 and A-5, and the inner ones for A-5 only (for four racks). It looks to me that that the A-4 Torps had the PVC racks (what does that PVC stand for, by the way?) closer to fuselage than the engine nacelles. Filling those wrong holes isn´t difficult, locating the proper positions is now that the wings are closed... Anybody got unbuilt Revell wings so the distance between the holes could be measured? V-P

VP , this sounds as good a reason as any to go and get yourself another revell kit as a refrance

[vppelt68]

VP , this sounds as good a reason as any to go and get yourself another revell kit as a refrance

So your hobbies are plastic modelling and reading other peoples minds? Was it that obvious?

Actually, I could postpone that He 111 til... later, and get a Revell Ju 88 for the GPW GB... and the MTO GB... and the STOP!

[Mottlemaster]

So your hobbies are plastic modelling and reading other peoples minds? Was it that obvious?

Actually, I could postpone that He 111 til... later, and get a Revell Ju 88 for the GPW GB... and the MTO GB... and the STOP!

have had plenty of practice reading my wifes mind ...... hang on got to go and tidy my work bench as in 5 mins shes gong to tell me its sprawling over into her gigsaw area . ( ing )

[jrlx]

Hi VP,

Great progress so far! The kit seems to build beautifully. I'll be following along, as I'm about to start mine.

Cheers

Jaime

[vppelt68]

Minimal progress report, but one nevertheless. I´m not much of a modeller, nor much of a photographer, but I was the initiator and now host of this STGB so I´ll post something!

Spent a quarter of an hour last night assembling the engine nacelles. Their inner surfaces had been painted a day before yesterday along with other stuff that needed to be painted with RLM 02. Revell has (again) shown some clever model engineering. The nacelle halves are keyed with each having two or three alignment tabs, so you can´t fit the starboard LH half in the port wing, and vice versa, and the same with RH halves of course. Actually, you don´t even need to check the part numbers as each part fits in only one location. I was also very happy with the fit of these parts. The upper seam may need some filling but that´s minor.

EDIT: By the upper seam I mean the join to the wings' upper surface.

I´m glad I had the landing gears assembled, it´d be less nice to do them through the opening, though not that difficult either.

To be honest, I´m shopping for a third kit at the moment...

Keep on modelling. Regards, V-P

[Mottlemaster]

Has the work on the two airframes been exctly the same so far or are there minor differences?

[vppelt68]

Only in the piercing of the holes in the wings for the external stores - I don't know yet which fuselage ends up in the torp variant and which in the mmmm well we'll see... But yes, almost exactly the same.

[rob85]

Nice progress on the above VP, I can see why you would avoid the cockpit for now!

Your talk of torpedoes and he 111 my mind has been draw to the MTO gb.... When does airfix release there he 111 trop bomber with Sicily markings!?

Rob

[vppelt68]

Rob, the Revellgawa He 111 has decals for a MTO plane, though it lacks the torps :-(

My builds around the cockpits go fine. I plan to go on with unconventional build sequence and that includes painting some subassemblies before joining them. The rear fuselages are now ready to be painted, as the only parts missing are the tailwheels, which don´t interfere with the painting. The wings are finished except those bomb/torp racks that overlap the fuselage/wing joint and thus need to be added at a later stage. The wings can´t be added before the front and rear fuselage are mated together - and that means building the d**n cockpits :-) BUT, I checked that the engine/radiator faces and all exhausts can be added AFTER the cowlings are assembled and added to nacelles, so I did exactly that. Silly me!

I don´t show pics of my builds, but I show some pics about the way I plan to decorate them. These pics are from Mr. Hannu Valtonens´ book I have mentioned earlier in this thread as my references. I like "prototype freelancing"- approach, by which I mean there´s a pic of, say AB+CD, and I try to replicate its look in say AB+XD, of which there aren´t any pics that I know of, but it may be mentioned in a loss report or whatever. That isn´t a whif :-)

So, let me introduce Herr Generaloberst Hans-Jürgen Stumpff and one of his migratory birds, that spent the summer of 1942 in the Arctic region and then migrated to the heat of the Mediterranean for the winter:-) This is a torpedo bomber from III/KG 26 and the location is Banak, what else.

Here´s the other one, although from I/KG 30, not 5. Staffel that I plan to do, and taken in 1943:

The pics are for educational purposes only, and taken with my phones´ MS Office Lens app from the book. Good enough for this purpose though!

I need some help with this, so please tell me am I correct in interpreting these pics so that

- both planes have black lower surfaces

- (the torp bomber pic in the book shows it, above not) both planes have Luftflotte 5- typically theater band only below the fuselage Balkenkreutz

- the bomber has repainted band below "G" letter, and it´s not yellow

- the bomber has yellow lower cowlings, torp bomber not

- both planes show yellow wingtips as expected?

I plan to make the bomber in 5. Staffel colours (red) and the torp bomber in 9. Staffel (yellow), which means building a third one in 1.(F)/22 colours (white) would give me a full set. Hmmmm.... These Revell kits don´t even cost that much, but do I have the time? For your eyes sake, no build pics this time :-)

Regards, V-P

[vppelt68]

Last thursday I placed an order for Eduard Ju 88 etc. canopy masks at MJW Models - today they were in my mailbox here in Finland, simply excellent, thanks Mike!

[Ozzy]

Enjoy masking all that glass.

[vppelt68]

Thanks Ozzy, some of those masking pieces are quite tiny!

[vppelt68]

First, let me say a big "thank you" for Stew Dapple and Bil for supplying me spare parts for this build! Here´s an overview of what pieces outside the Revell Ju 88 kits' boxes I plan to use:

Hasegawa 1000kg bombs and an MG-FF, to which a drum magazine will be picked from an Eduard Bf 110 kit, Zvezda torpedo racks, fuselage fairing and possibly torpedos, Italeri torpedos and Eduard paint mask. The Zvezda A-5/A-17 decal set supplies me some code letters and more importantly, correctly coloured unit shields for II/KG 30 and III/KG 26. Oh I have bought the paint masks and Hase parts, they aren´t donated to me, but everything else is!

Here are the Zvezda torpedos compared to an Italeri supplied one. I placed them back to back and found a difference in warhead shape and tail length, but the taper was close to identical. So I suppose the Zvezdas could be shortened at the same length than the Italeri ones, and a new tail be added from thin styrene. Actually that doesn´t sound too bad at all. Below is a pic of a warhead of a Luftwaffe torpedo hanging from a Heinkel, and to my eyes the shape is closer to Zvezda than Italeri. Whaddaya say?

This is where my build was left last night. I didn´t go to every nook and cranny with the splinters, I still have some of my sanity left! Regards, V-P

[Mottlemaster]

I have ust had a look at my copy of luftwaffe Aerial Torpedo Aircraft and Operations in ww2 by harold Thiele and i would say the Zvezdas tail looks closer to the photos .

[vppelt68]

Thanks Alistair, indeed the cigars hung from the 1T+ (in a pic a few posts above) look not so much different in shape than the Zvezda parts. Let´s see what comes out of this... BTW I read in my references that the III/KG 26 flew their first set of torpedos along with their Ju 88:s on their migration to Banak! Must´ve been a pleasure to fly and land for each refuelling on the way, with two torps. V-P

[jrlx]

Hi VP,

good to see you are progressing! Are you planning to paint the fuselage and wings separately? How will you deal with the wing root joins then?

Cheers

Jaime

[vppelt68]

Well I´ll deal with that later! Actually, in some of the twin engined planes I´ve done earlier (and especially Ju 88) I´ve found that the engines and fuselage front interfere with each other when painting and decaling them, so this time I decided to try to do it this way. I´ll finish all the three major components as far as possible and then try to fix the roots after joining them. After all, it´s just pieces of plastic, if something goes wrong :-) Regards, V-P