Finished: Another 1/48 109 - this time a Hobby Boss G-2

[jackroadkill]

One in, one out seems to be the way things are going, although as I'm back in work properly from Thursday things might slow down a bit on the model-building front.  I picked up a Hobby Boss Bf109G-2 locally and decided to give it a crack after finishing my Emil.  First impressions of the kit are that it's basic but workable.  The intention with this one is to use it as a chance to improve my tidying-up skills (join lines, re-cutting panel lines, getting braver with cockpit detailing etc).  I'm going OOB completely on this one, although I might do something about the pitiful effort the manufacturers did on the cowling guns.  Oh, and I'm going to try making some seatbelts for it.  It will be built using the supplied decals, and I'm going with Gunther Rall's JG52 "Black 13" markings.  As Staffelkapitan, though, he apparently he flew Black 1 more or less exclusively, using Black13 very infrequently.

 

I didn't bother with a sprue shot, and just got on with getting the cockpit interior sorted.  There's no PE going on here so I decided to spruce it up a bit using paint.  I'm in the process of making the drop-tank's fuel transfer pipe out of copper wire, as the represented part here is barely visible; I haven't finished yet but you all know what it looks like and where it will go.  As you will see from the picture below I've lightened some raised areas with heavily-thinned paint prior to dark washing around them in order to give a bit of colour differentiation between various parts.  A cocktail stick was my friend for painting knobs and buttons etc.  I applied the IP decal, decided it sucked and pulled it back off, instead using some drybrushing and nail varnish on the instruments themselves.

 

 

 

Things don't all fit very well:

 

 

 

 

I had to glue the tank together in three stages because the curve profiles of each half didn't match.  Still, liberal dosings of Tamiya Extra Thin seem to have done the job - now I just have to make both halves of the lines join up properly with each other and get rid of the overlapping join line:

 

 

The wings went together reasonably well, but I'm stumped as to what this thing is and what purpose it serves:

 

 

 

So that's it for now but we'll see how it comes together.

 

Thanks,

 

JRK

[Werdna]

Will be following this...

 

I built the F-4 version of this kit a few months ago.  The 'thing' between the wings - is also present on the F-4 and I've no idea what it is either.  But whatever it is/was, it prevented the fuselage/wing joins from fitting correctly, so I removed it and then everything fitted fine.  It doesn't seem to serve a purpose and can't be seen anyway.

 

The fit on mine was pretty good, apart from the canopy, which needed some trimming. 

[alt-92]

17 minutes ago, Werdna said:

The 'thing' between the wings

Fuel tank, actually.

[Werdna]

2 hours ago, alt-92 said:

Fuel tank, actually.

Fortunately, my 109F-4 just sits on a shelf, so doesn't need any fuel..

[alt-92]

Stick some solar panels on it, brushless electric motor, and you have a 'green' model

 

[jackroadkill]

A small update:

 

The model is coming together reasonably well.  I pulled off the fuel tank because it just got in the way, made some belts out of painted masking tape, cut the wing-tip lights out (and made some lenses out of sprue), and got wings, tailplane and fuselage joined together.  The airscrew is made but not attached yet.  This is for two reasons: I like to put it on last so that I don't break it whist fiddling with things and also because I want to make it turnable, which it isn't as stock.  A few base coats of RLM76 have been applied and it's all beginning to take shape.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jackroadkill]

Started to splash a bit more Dulux around the place:

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see, it's very preliminary.  I'm trying to reproduce a reasonable mottled/ faded /transition effect in the necessary areas with no airbrush, so it might take a while and a bit of R and D before it's correct, but I'm not worried about that at this stage.

 

More updates when more has happened.

 

Thanks,

 

JRK

[Werdna]

Looks like you removed the guns?

[jackroadkill]

9 hours ago, Werdna said:

Looks like you removed the guns?

It does, but I haven't!  Must be a trick of the light.

[jackroadkill]

I'm having some trouble with the paint colours on this one and am hoping you more experienced folk might be able to help me.  HB show the 74/75/76 colour scheme on their painting and marking sheet, and it shows a definite difference between the grey green (74) and grey violet (75).  However, I painted the upper surfaces in the 75 and then came to apply the 74 over the top and found that the shades were virtually identical.  The illustrations show that there should, according to HB, be an easily discernable difference, and given that this is supposed to be a pattern that disrupts the outline of the aircraft, it's what I expected.

 

Can anyone help, please?

 

Thanks,

 

JRK

[Graham Boak]

You don't say which paints you were using, but your sprayed 75 (if that is what it is in the photos above) looks too dark.  All the paint options and colour charts I have and colour photos I've seen, do indeed show considerable contrast.  So redo the 75 with some white in the mix?  

 

[jackroadkill]

Hi @Graham Boak

 

Thanks for that - at least it confirms my suspicions that the shades are a bit close.  I may also put the merest extra touch of green into the 74, too.

[Graham Boak]

74 shouldn't have any visible green, so I wouldn't bother with that.  

[jackroadkill]

I lost my rag with the Gustav and then found my rag, using it (and a bucketload of thinners) to remove the offending paint. 

 

 

So now we're back to square one, paintwork-wise.  I'll try lightening some of the 75 I have and we'll have another try.  In addition I'll straighten the bent pitot and replace the two broken tank brackets at some point, too.

[jackroadkill]

Sorry for the lack of updates recently; I've been off the grid for a bit.  When I returned, I decided that the Gustav's fuselage needed stripping AGAIN as the panel lines were now full (are HB's panel lines very shallow, or had I just put so many coats on that they'd disappeared?).  I got out the thinners and wiped the latest coat of paint away, happy at least in the knowledge that I've sorted the colour issues out (thanks to @Graham Boak for the tips he gave above).  I then dug the gunk out of the panel lines and I think that I might actually be able to get on with some painting once the last trace of the thinners has evaporated.

 

I'll be honest, this one is starting to get on my wick.  That said, maybe I can out-stubborn it and get the bloody thing done.  After all, there are other models that need building....

 

[jackroadkill]

Have finally managed to get some paint that I'm happy with onto the Gustav, and found myself getting excited about it again, as it's been a bit of an albatross around my neck recently.  Thanks to @Graham Boak for the paint advice - it made the difference nicely and got me back in the saddle with the project.  So, at last the 74/75/76 base is finished, and there's only the mottling left to do, which I can get on with soon.  I also got the first coat of the RLM 04 on the undersides of the nose and wingtips and did the rear fuselage band in the same colour.

 

During the build I'd broken the impossibly delicate tank hangers off, so I remade them out of solder (after an abortive attempt using sewing pins) and got the tank hung.

 

 

 

 

As an aside, I struggled to get a good picture of the top side of the model; it was only after musing on this for a few minutes that I remembered what the job of a camouflage scheme is....

 

Anyway, I'm really glad to be enjoying this one again.

 

[jackroadkill]

At last, there's some progress to report.  Not a lot, but some.  I've started the mottling, which, without an airbrush, I'm beginning to find is quite a job.  Still, if done in stages with care taken it seems as if a reasonable standard can be achieved, so this is the very first stage.  All I did was to flood the surface of the model with thinners, carefully apply paint and allow it to diffuse across the surface of the thinners.  There will be a second, smaller and more thinned application of the RLM 74 onto the mottled areas next, and after that a thinned application of RLM 76 between the mottles.  That's the plan, at least, and hopefully it will blur the edges of the mottles a little.

 

Anyway, here she is:

 

 

[jackroadkill]

Since the last post I've blended the mottles down a bit and am reasonably happy with the overall effect.  I've also fitted the (very spindly and widely-splayed) undercarriage, which has brought me to the realisation that the model is finally nearing the stage where she'll be ready for decals.  I have some Vallejo gloss on order, so hopefully by the time it arrives I'll have got the aileron mass reversing damper thimbles fitted and attached the tailwheel.  You never know, at some point I might actually finish the little so-and-so.

 

[jackroadkill]

I'm slowly dragging this little swine towards the finish line...

 

I've got all the big decals on it now, and just have the tank warnings and stencil details to go.  I'm getting there slowly - this model has been a long slog with not much in the way of reward so far, but I'm determined to a) finish it, and b) enjoy something (although I don't know what!) about it at some point.

 

 

The decals weren't incredibly co-operative but they look okay (yes, I need to do something about the nick out of the balkankreutz) and I'm hoping that I can get a result with them.

 

So, not a whole heap left to do.  Thankfully.

[jackroadkill]

I'm very happy to report that I'm nearly there, all bar the shouting.  I've got the airscrew on, which always seems like a pivotal moment; I've also got some weathering (well, muck) on her, and I've fixed that terrible, splayed Twiglet-esque undercarriage.  The undercarriage was making the whole thing look ridiculous, as it was knock-kneed and weak, leaving the aircraft cowering like a beaten animal.  I got rid of the fixing pegs, re-cut the angle of the leg tops and drilled and pinned the struts into the sockets in the wings.  She now stands up properly and doesn't sit a scale four feet lower than the Emil on the shelf.  I've stretched some sprue (a first for me) to make the aerial.  I tried using Hobby Boss's sprue and it didn't come good, so I tried some Airfix sprue and got a reasonable result, so we'll see what we get with it.

 

Jobs left to do: fit the new pitot head, get rid of weird lines on the port wing, finish weathering, make some position lights, matt coat the aircraft, breathe huge sigh of relief, post RFI.....  In theory, anyway.

 

 

Lines are evident here - they're 6mm away from the darker camo parts, so they're something to do with masking tape, methinks!  You can see where I removed the positional lights before coming up with a viable replacement, but the moulding was so clumsy I felt that I couldn't really make them any worse.

 

 

Here you can see the undercarriage; the geometry is better but I've struggled to do much with the fairings.  However you look at it, just getting this done has made a big improvement to how I feel about the model as a whole.

 

Apologies for the cruddy iPhone pictures.

 

So, I'm nearly there.  I've gone from being really excited by this model to being apathetic and then thoroughly brassed off with it, and am now happy to have managed to salvage something from it.  The end being in sight really helps in this respect.  I've started the next build and so far it's making this one seem like a job that Sisyphus would have swapped his boulder for, so that's a positive too.

[jackroadkill]

Finished, at last.

 

 

RFI to follow.  Thanks to everyone who has viewed, offered help towards and cheered on this build.