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SWS 1/32nd Ta-152H-1 - Finished


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Oh dear this one come up so quickly it caught me by surprise I still thought I had another month to go before this one! I’m the first to start a thread but I think this will be to just grab a space as I am still so far behind on other projects!!

A 1/32nd SWS Ta-152H-1!!! Not a scale I normally work in but for some aircraft you just have to go large and this is one of them!

I have so wanted to build one of these or any SWS model for so long, this will be my third attempt to. The first was to be an Ho-229, I pre-ordered one but had my money stolen by a dodgy dealer (there’s a whole thread on BM about these scum bags!), the second a Ta-152H-1 like this but it was lost by evilBay’s “Global Package Loosing System”, least I got my money back from that! So this is the third attempt!

I would love to say such an amazing model will be straight form the box, it should be…..but I have a few plans for it! No outrageous mods, will leave that for other builds, just some PE flaps and interior plus some Master brass barrels. No idea of a scheme as yet but she’ll be a factory fresh one for a change…..maybe!

Not a lot to her so all the work will be getting the details and finish right……

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Like your thinking on how your going to approach this build . Brave subject for a G/B as i expect this one will have countless Eduard kits flying around in swarms .

Good luck with your time management :popcorn:

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Great to so you build this model. I will go for a 1/32 model as well. I will try to post that later today.

Cheers and good luck with your build.

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I'm so looking forward to this one as well! I had the engine out last night to help sort out the issues I had with the 190.

Apart from tiding up mould lines the moulding is excellent.

I'm going for the full PE bits as well, for something this size it demands extra detailing.

I have no idea of the scheme yet, will have a look to see whats available, the crosses etc will be painted!

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My plan for a scheme when I come to building it will be the all-over orange livery of Oberstleutnant Fritz Aufhammer, commander of JG 301.

"His" Ta 152 was painted over all orange (a mixture of RLM red and RLM yellow) on March 22nd 1945 for a flight to Rechlin. The reason for this measure was to avoid being shot down by the German Flak crews which are maybe not so familar with this new type and might confuse it with an enemy aircraft.

See here:

http://www.helmo.gr/gallery2/d/89649-1/20110909201427784_0001.jpg?g2_GALLERYSID=TMP_SESSION_ID_DI_NOISSES_PMT

Although Aufhammer noted this in his flight book the story is not backed up with photos of the orange Ta 152 - so there is no 100% proof of this. Anyway I have a favour for unusual paint jobs :-)

One more thing: It is reported that the orange livery was only applied for a single day - so weathering will be minimal.

René

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My plan for a scheme when I come to building it will be the all-over orange livery of Oberstleutnant Fritz Aufhammer, commander of JG 301.

"His" Ta 152 was painted over all orange (a mixture of RLM red and RLM yellow) on March 22nd 1945 for a flight to Rechlin. The reason for this measure was to avoid being shot down by the German Flak crews which are maybe not so familar with this new type and might confuse it with an enemy aircraft.

See here:

http://www.helmo.gr/gallery2/d/89649-1/20110909201427784_0001.jpg?g2_GALLERYSID=TMP_SESSION_ID_DI_NOISSES_PMT

Although Aufhammer noted this in his flight book the story is not backed up with photos of the orange Ta 152 - so there is no 100% proof of this. Anyway I have a favour for unusual paint jobs :-)

One more thing: It is reported that the orange livery was only applied for a single day - so weathering will be minimal.

René

That would be awesome, I have heard about that one as well, plus I have a profile pic of it somewhere as well!

I don't think any of the Ta-152H's would have been that weathered at all, maybe a slightly dodgy paint job bit relatively clean.

I have to do some research on them plus I need to find a cool colour scheme as well, though they're all pretty much the same!!

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With all the open panle options you could also build it as a part painted assembly line diorama. Otherwise the liveries for the Ta 152 are as you say a bit limited.

What is that TR logo in your signature?

René

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With all the open panle options you could also build it as a part painted assembly line diorama. Otherwise the liveries for the Ta 152 are as you say a bit limited.

What is that TR logo in your signature?

René

hmmm, I do want to finish this one, the diorama sounds good but time consuming......

TR = trickyrich :D

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Well noted on the TR logo - nice idea. Though you may want to change it a little - it should be "Flugzeugwerke" not "Flugzeug Werks".

In German you merge single words to a new and sometimes very long ones like Elek­tri­zi­täts­ver­sor­gungs­unter­neh­men, Ge­schlechts­chro­mo­so­men­kon­stel­la­tion, Kran­ken­ver­sicher­ungs­än­der­ungs­ge­setz and so on... AFAIK the longest German word was Grund­stücks­ver­kehrs­ge­neh­mi­gungs­zu­stän­dig­keits­über­tra­gungs­ver­ord­nung but this is referring to a law that does not exist anymore, so the word became a bit obsolete. End of smartass ;-)

René

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My plan for a scheme when I come to building it will be the all-over orange livery of Oberstleutnant Fritz Aufhammer, commander of JG 301.

"His" Ta 152 was painted over all orange (a mixture of RLM red and RLM yellow) on March 22nd 1945 for a flight to Rechlin. The reason for this measure was to avoid being shot down by the German Flak crews which are maybe not so familar with this new type and might confuse it with an enemy aircraft.

See here:

http://www.helmo.gr/gallery2/d/89649-1/20110909201427784_0001.jpg?g2_GALLERYSID=TMP_SESSION_ID_DI_NOISSES_PMT

Although Aufhammer noted this in his flight book the story is not backed up with photos of the orange Ta 152 - so there is no 100% proof of this. Anyway I have a favour for unusual paint jobs :-)

One more thing: It is reported that the orange livery was only applied for a single day - so weathering will be minimal.

René

If the orange was applied for a single trip i would think there is a strong possibility that it was applied very crueddly so flack gun crew would see it as orange , but close up it woud have the original paint showing in all those hard to reach places like around markings , canopy frame . may be original paint even showed through the orange in places .

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My plan for a scheme when I come to building it will be the all-over orange livery of Oberstleutnant Fritz Aufhammer, commander of JG 301.

"His" Ta 152 was painted over all orange (a mixture of RLM red and RLM yellow) on March 22nd 1945 for a flight to Rechlin. The reason for this measure was to avoid being shot down by the German Flak crews which are maybe not so familar with this new type and might confuse it with an enemy aircraft.

See here:

http://www.helmo.gr/gallery2/d/89649-1/20110909201427784_0001.jpg?g2_GALLERYSID=TMP_SESSION_ID_DI_NOISSES_PMT

Although Aufhammer noted this in his flight book the story is not backed up with photos of the orange Ta 152 - so there is no 100% proof of this. Anyway I have a favour for unusual paint jobs :-)

One more thing: It is reported that the orange livery was only applied for a single day - so weathering will be minimal.

René

I think this has been discussed at length here and elsewhere, with detractors saying that it was a potential leg pull of Jerry Crandall who did a lot of pushy interviews with Luftwaffe aces. I tend to doubt the veracity of this story as surely someone would have taken a photo. Still, you can never completely discount anything as far as WWII goes.

Looking forward to seeing this build develop, the Ta-152H is a beautiful plane.

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Well noted on the TR logo - nice idea. Though you may want to change it a little - it should be "Flugzeugwerke" not "Flugzeug Werks".

It was actually intensionally done this way.......that said I have actually had some other ideas recently so there maybe still further modifications to it.....gosh that sounds like one of my builds!!

Great subject ,, best of luck with this one Rich..

Andy.

I'm looking forward to this one.

I've ordered the PE bits as well, though I still need to get the interior set. Not sure if I'll get to start this one this break...maybe, will just have to see how it goes.

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Ok this is just a very small update as I have actually started the engine only so as to help with the Fw-190D build.

I have to say that the quality of the moulding is not what I expected, the Tamiya stuff I’ve been building lately is much better! The engine moulding is a little vague in places and the joins are not the best either. This was the second model they produced and I have heard that some of these sprues had been revised and updated with the Ta-152H-0 version.

Anyway there was a bit of cleaning up required before and after the main assemblies in the engine where glued together. At least with this one I can paint the black parts separately (silver and black coloured plastic…what were they thinking!)

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Two of the PE sets have arrived, the Exterior and Flap sets…they look fun! I built up one of the flaps last night, not quite a nightmare to do but very time consuming. I’m very tempted to try soldering them on the next one. The hinge joins on the panels look particularly frightening!

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I’m trying not to get too involved in this one yet until the Sukhoi is finished, plus I’m waiting on the Interior PE set as well.

Building this and the Fw-190D together should be fun plus allow me to transfer details between the two.

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Rich just looking at those flaps scares the life out of me. As for the coloured plastic matchbox?

I'm glad to see they dropped the "Matchbox" plastic from later models....sort of!

What makes it worse with the flaps, and all the PE for that matter, is that the instructions are in Japanese!!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well I can finally make a proper start on this one, now the Sukhoi is almost done and the cockpit PE set has arrived!

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So not really following the instruction manual order of things off we go.

The engine will be put aside for the moment and I’ll work on the cockpit and wings first up.

Quite a bit of the cockpit can be built up before any painting is required which is what I have done. I have to say the fit and some of the mould lines throughout the model aren’t the best, which is a bit of a surprise! Quite a lot of cleaning up was required and in some cases the locating pins and strips were completely remove so I could get things to fit nicely! All the detail on the side panels were removed, along with those of the instrument panel, these will be replace with the painted PE bits..

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The rudder pedals are made up and the seat cleaned up. Everything has been given a coat of aluminium, as an undercoat plus a chance to see how well I cleaned up everything…..and I missed a few spots!

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The rear section of the engine bay and the Nitrous Oxide tank, there’s quite a bit to do on the tank yet. There are quite a few other bits and pieces to go into the fuselage that won’t be seen unless you open up more panels. I’m not going to go that far with this one, so I won’t fit them. Am only going to add the additional PE and some extra detailing in the engine and gun bays, so this build with be for me what I consider an OOB build.

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The lower wing took quite a bit of work to assemble, mainly getting it all to fit together correctly. There is a huge spar which holds it all together…..which I had to cut up!!

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Which you can see at the back, RHS spar, LHS no spar!

Yes because of the new PE flaps….I fitted the first section I made to the upper wing section, this is the new flap area detail. All the moulded detail had to be removed leaving only the thin raised bit on the trailing edge. Once fitted it didn’t look to bad, probably could have got the fit a but snugger but it looks ok.

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The problem is though now the upper wing won’t fit correctly to the lower wing and spar, the distance out just happens to be the thickness of the spar!!! No mention is made anywhere (well the instruction for the PE flaps are in Japanese, but the picture don’t show anything) if you need to remove the spar or not. Even if I do remove that thin section along the trailing edge on the upper wing it won’t be enough still for it to fit with the spar still there.

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With the spar removed and it altogether it looks quite ok but photos of the actual wing do show this upper section of the flap bay sitting further back, I may have to remove this PE section and carefully move it back about a 1mm or so. I’ll try it on the other side first a see how it goes. Whatever I end up doing I will have to remove the spar! So much for the simple build!

The wingspan is huge, nearly ½ metre across (20” for those still in the dark ages) so she’s going to take up quite a bit of shelf real-estate!

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She even makes the Sukhoi look small and it’s a big model!

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I should get all the tiding up done tomorrow so I can then start to put some real paint on her. I want to get the fuselage finished first up along with the wing probably, then I’ll start to worry about the engine. Other than the issue with the flaps, which I could probably leave as is, as no one would notice, things are going quite smoothly and it should be a fairly quick build!

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Nice start Rich. those flaps look great in metall. Can't wait to see the rest.

I hope to do some work on mine shortly.

Cheers,

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Nice start Rich. those flaps look great in metall. Can't wait to see the rest.

I hope to do some work on mine shortly.

Cheers,

I must say they look so much better with a coat of paint. If I can get the positioning sorted out I'll be much happier.

If you don't hurry up I'll get distracted and drag out the 388J, can blame Alistair for that!

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nice work there must get me one of those at some point

They're really nice but I'd go for their later release, the Ta-152H-0. They made some changes and improvements to the moulds, the moulds on this one are pretty so so in some places! And what ever you do DON'T buy the PE flaps, they are an absolute nightmare!!!! You'd be far better off building them from scratch which I'm going to have to do!!!!

Ok I was a bit excited yesterday morning to get the flaps sorted and get on with the build….I should have stayed in bed! It started off good but by the time I finished I was looking for a rather large heavy blunt object to use to relieve my frustration…..

So to start with…. I built up the second wings flap detail, this was a bit easier then the first time, then removed all the old moulded detail from the wing. I thinned the trailing edge, which I think had caused issues with the first wing right back being careful not to remove too much.

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I now tried this with the spar still in place but as you can sort of see it still won’t fit. To get it to fit with the spar in place would mean the trailing edge of the flap detail would extend past the original trailing edge position! So the spar has to go!

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I did it a bit different this time, I removed most of the spar but just left the inner most section which I thinned right back. I also had to remove quite a bit of plastic where the outer end on the flap goes as well as all the locating bits for the old spar so as to get both parts of the wing to sit correctly.

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Not the best photos but everything now fits really nicely.

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So with that done I carefully removed the flap detail from the frist one and thinned back the trailing edge and refitted. Not easy to do at all but finally got that one sorted as well, just a wee stuff up on the outside edge, the PE sits a wee bit proud of the trailing edge. Hardly noticeable at all.

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One thing I did notice is that there is a small hole on each side of the wing (not sure what is there for, may be something pokes up when the flaps are up???), anyway there is a hole on the PE which one would assume is meant to line up….well not even close! I’m quite surprised by this, one would assume between Eduard (they make the PE) and Zoukei Mura there wouldn’t be any errors anywhere, but as I’m finding/about to find out this PE set leaves a lot to be desired!

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The wings are impressive when together and bl##dy long!

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Well with that out of the way I should have either gone back to bed or continued with the Sukhoi (which I should have been on anyway), or just anything then what I attempted next….

Filled with a sense of success (a very false sense!) I thought I tackle one of the flaps themselves. They are on the RHS and involve quite a bit of folding!

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There are 21 tiny struts that needed to be folded twice and twisted, a nightmare in itself made even harder by the tiny bit of metal they’re attached to the main flap with. I’m bound to break off one……..well I managed to break off all 21 of them!!

After about 3 or more hours of work I’m left with this piece of rubbish! There isn’t one straight or even slightly correct looking strut! Most are badly bent and have fallen off more that once along with the thin trail edge they were attached to! It looks horrible so I can't use it as it is!!

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The real issue is that you first off cannot fold the strut so that the trailing edge of it is nice and thin. Impossible to do it whilst its still attached to the main flap and equally as hard once it breaks off and it will for the second reason. You can generally get away with folding PE a couple of time before you run the risk of it snapping off! Twisting PE is another matter, you usually get one chance and that’s about it. In this case the piece of metal is so tiny just about blowing on it will cause them to snap off!

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So after wanting to destroy every bit of PE I could find (I really do hate the stuff!) I had to think about what I can do to fix this mess! Worse case, and still looking good, is to abandon the flaps altogether and build them in the up position, and I may still do that. The second option, much slower but will look cool is to completely rebuild them! For this I’ll either use the main PE flap and the box section frame, then remake the struts from plastic, slow but doable. Or complete remake them from scratch, but only using the PE box section, which is sort of my preferred option if I’m going to rebuild them. Whichever way I go with the last two options it’ll be a slow process. I should be lazy and leave them up!

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Hi Rich,

Following along and share your disappointment with the PE flap sections. I cannot help with that but I can explain the hole in the wing upper. It was a flap position indicator and as a picture speaks a thousand words:

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Regards,

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