A Tale of Two Butcher Birds

[Michael louey]

So early this year I decided to start on the Zvezda Fw 190A4, the main reason being that being such a simple kit it would keep my frustration levels down while building a parallel "short run" Brengun Typhoon in parallel (I had started an RS Airacobra but thought better of doing 2 tedious short run kits together).

The subject aircraft I was planning was that of Siegfried Schnell, a quite photographed airframe. It's on the cover of Jagdwaffe Vol 4 Section 1. The spanner in the works once I started was realising that Zvezda had modelled a late model A4 with cooling slats and solid wheels. The second issue could be managed as I had a set of perforated Barracuda wheels and wheel cover but the slats were an insurmountable issue.

As I had already started on the project, I had a look through the decal bank and there were no other appealing subjects so I ordered the new "Exito" sheet on 190's which contained an interesting airframe from 1/SG101.

The Zvezda kit is quite nice in most ways but does have a few issues. First is the spinner - it's too long. The prop is also a bit thick. I replaced them with a set of Barracuda items I had handy. The canopy might have been ok but I've read it's made of some non standard clear material and was moulded in one piece. I used a spare Hasegawa windscreen and a Falcon canopy to open up the canopy. There were a few sinkage marks in the kit, the most obvious being in the underside of the wing fairings. I missed some near the wing tips as they weren't so obvious until the kit was completed.

Once I finished the Zvezda kit, I really did want to model Schnell's aircraft since I had all the reference and decals lying around so it was back to using the old Tamiya A3. I splashed out and got the Quickboost conversion though I think you could just scratch up the new fin/antenna setup.
The Tamiya kit fell together as Tamiya kits do. Here's some pictures of both together.

 

 

 

The Zvezda kit is a "snaptite" but is actually quite well detailed. I removed some of the snap tite plugs to get tighter joins. In addition the updates already listed, I had to remove the underwing outer cannon bulges and guns as this airframe had outer guns deleted. A shame as reports say the bulges are more accurate in shape than the Tamiya kit. The inner cannon were replaced with Master set as an experiment after I knocked off the plastic ones. A bit of work getting them aligned. The pitot was replaced with the Master item as well. The head armour and support are also off the Hasegawa kit as the original has no support and less detail.

Exito have really gone to extra lengths with their material. The instructions are basically A4 art profiles on one side with detail placements on the other. Decal quality is good and the subject matter is a bit different to the normal run of the mill.

 

 

 

 

The Tamiya kit is probably well know to most Luftwaffe modellers. I've built it once before as an A2 which externally looks identical. I still have yet to build an actual A3 but I've backfilled this kit to do that in the future.

The only changes to the kit were the quickboost fin tip to represent the A4 aerial arrangement, a Quickboost pitot tube and the outer MG's which were leftovers of the Master set used on the Zvezda kit.

Schnell's machine is interesting as it has asymmetrical Eagle patterns on each side of the exhausts. The decals are from Aeromaster who must have only had photos of one side as they only supplied the simplified pattern of the starboard side. Fortunately the Tamiya kit has an option with the full Eagles head though the whites in it, as is common to Japanese manufacturers, is more cream than pure white like the Aeromaster sheet.
 

 

 

 

Cheers

 

Michael

Edited May 8, 2020 by Michael louey

[Aces High]

Nice one! No wait, nice two! Very good work on both of them.