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Junkers Ju-52 Aeroposta Argentina, Italeri 1/72 conversion


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Darn and Drat!

I am delayed until the arrival of the donor kit that will provide the replacement area for the inaccurate Italeri cargo door. Of all places, it's coming from Japan.

Meanwhile I keep working on a trio of secret projects, here is one of them:

33840506508_6695f96f30_b.jpg

 

A Martian treat (some sort of alien secretion iirc) for the first one able to ID this plane:

32774357627_277e81fa9d_b.jpg

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I‘ll get a wabbit for support. He‘s hard (i.e. impossible) to control but he knows where his carrots come from.

Once he snatches the illudium space modulator our resident alien is mercifully  stalled.....for the time being

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A portion of fuselage skin was excised from the donor kit and applied to reconstitute the proper size corrugations omitted by Italeri in its "civil" version (that is nothing more than a hastily half-adapted cosmetic work on their part with many important and inexplicable inaccuracies):

IMG_3561+%25281280x960%2529.jpg

 

 Another little stumbling block if you are doing this: in spite of being in the same area, the "constant" corrugations on the fuselage are not really constant, and start to diverge elsewhere, a fact I realized after cutting two sections that wouldn't really properly match the corrugations in the area that needed correction. The third time is the charm, as it's said....Sigh...

IMG_3562+%25281280x960%2529.jpg

 

 Now the windows have to be separated from the Mickey Mouse kit "patch" to be later added:
IMG_3563+%25281280x960%2529.jpg

 

My son (that builds in the heretic scale of 1/48, in spite of impeccable upbringing) showed me images of the civil version by Revell, that, as far as I can tell, properly addressed all the issues that Italeri blatantly ignored.

Coming particularly from Revell Germany, though, I find it of extremely poor taste that they included not just one, but two nazi decorations for this kit, I guess nostalgics can be found everywhere.

 

 

 

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Once the excised window frame is added, the area is ready to prime and refine. It is possible that a very faint imperfection remains somewhere, but it will be much better and accurate in any case that the totally bogus solution posited by Italeri:

IMG_3564+%25281280x960%2529.jpg

 

My evil plan of using the donor kit for a second model using this time the home-made corrugations to fix the issues (and the hole left by the donation) went south, due to the necessity of having end up cutting three sections to find one with matching corrugations, and in the process chopping up entirely the fuselage side. I still may find a "rescue" kit that lost the transparencies or other important part but has the two fuselage sides.

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Not bogus. Look at the one Lufthansa operated until recently. It got that configuration in Norway after the war. But it is irritating that no civilian versions of the Ju52 is available in 1/72. I am getting tired of converting the Italeri kit.

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4 hours ago, Orso said:

Not bogus.

Well Bjørn, it is really bogus, in the sense that does not represent at all, legitimately, Junkers' civil versions, as sold and used extensively through the world, but a converted machine from military stock. I call that lazy, poor research on an otherwise delightful kit with a nice level of detail that builds like a charm. Pity. They remastered the roof (let's obviate for the moment the sink marks caused by not removing the gun support ring, another laziness) and added some parts, but fell utterly short of redoing the right fuselage side as it was called for to represent a true civil version.

 

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The net racks are added to the top fuselage:

IMG_3566+%25281280x960%2529.jpg

 

 I thought these were bubbles, defects, but they are also on the transparencies of the second kit, and they look suspiciously like devices to allow a gun to fire through, and if that's true, corresponding again to the military version this kit is supposed not to represent:
IMG_3567+%25281280x960%2529.jpg

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Not  poor research, just a way to get some extra money from the moulds with a minimum of investment.  This happens all the time. Revell has sold their 1958 SAAB Draken with new decals that can't be used on the kit version,  Hasegawa has done the same with their prototype SAAB Viggen. It is sad that there is no pre war civilian Ju52 in 1/72 and the same goes for the DC-3.  Airfix has a chance to do good if they decide on a new Ju52 but I have no hope on this. The sad thing building civilian planes is that we are lucky if they provide civilian decals to a military plane. If they change the moulds as much as they did with the Ju52 it is almost a miracle.

Are there any good quality kits of airliners in 1/72 scale? I can't think of any.

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B.t.w. Your doing a good job on the conversion. Will you add the missing corrugation under the fuselage?

The windows issue is strange. I didn't recognise it from the kit I built so I had a look at it and it doesn't have the gun port in the windows. Then I looked at the build that has been stalled for years and the same there. No gun ports.

Then I had a look in the four boxes of unbuilt kits, all of them has the gun ports, very irritating.

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On 5/1/2019 at 1:15 PM, Orso said:

Not  poor research, just a way to get some extra money from the moulds with a minimum of investment.  This happens all the time. Revell has sold their 1958 SAAB Draken with new decals that can't be used on the kit version,  Hasegawa has done the same with their prototype SAAB Viggen. It is sad that there is no pre war civilian Ju52 in 1/72 and the same goes for the DC-3.  Airfix has a chance to do good if they decide on a new Ju52 but I have no hope on this. The sad thing building civilian planes is that we are lucky if they provide civilian decals to a military plane. If they change the moulds as much as they did with the Ju52 it is almost a miracle.

Are there any good quality kits of airliners in 1/72 scale? I can't think of any.

Yes poor research for all the misses regarding the civil version.

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On 5/1/2019 at 1:17 PM, Orso said:

Will you add the missing corrugation under the fuselage?

My kit has the corrugations where they should be according to the version and what I can see in photos.

It lacks, though, a prominent spine that runs from under the nose to the belly where the hatches for the small packages are.

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18 hours ago, Orso said:

 

The Italeri kit has a flat spot just after the wing

while Heller has  corrugation there

The 1/48 scale kit has the corrugation there and so has this plane: http://www.ajbs.fr/wp-content/gallery/meeting-aerien-2013_1/ju-52-hb-hot-et-ju-52-ajbs_08.jpg

I see, thanks for posting the images.

it's not really a major thing, and its not on a conspicuous spot, and it's just a small area. May be i will add the "copied" corrugations, or i will just leave it alone. Will see how I feel after completing the fuselage.

 

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