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Junkers Ju 88 G-6c with AIMS conversion***FINISHED***


PeterB

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I have never had much success with using an airbrush for mottling, at least at 1/72 scale. This may be due to a combination of a fairly basic Badger airbrush, my increasingly shaky hands and a lack of skill, and I somewhat envy those who can actually do it! I use a brush with thinned paint, loading just the tip, wiping off excess on a paper towel and just "dabbing" it on. Sometimes it works quite well, sometimes not.

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This is probably not one of my better efforts. I have added the Pfeilgerat "window" and the landing light cover and painted everything up, so now I will put on the decs. Once they are on and dry I will add the wheel doors and then make a start on the radar aerials.

 

Pete

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Wheel doors one, decs on, and I managed to get the tail warning radar on as well - not as bad as I expected. They provide a strut which goes into a hole inside the fuselage, and that in turn glues on to a flat on top of the Y shaped bottom support. That also has flats on that locate on the outside of the open end of the fuselage, and once that was all dry I added the antenna which again has what my late father would have called a "half lap" joint, as do the ones on the nose masts.

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And no, having looked at the pic it is not quite lined up straight but will have to do.

 

The nose antennae glue on the a "spider" support frame which then is glued into cut-outs in the nose - bit difficult to get at without moving the ones already glued on but got there in the end. I will leave the nose until after I have added the vertical tail.

 

I am not too sure about the green aircraft letter - did the Stab flight really still use green when flying alone at night - I hardly think they needed a visual means of identification? The instructions also show the spinner in green (RLM 25?) but I think I will stick with RLM 76 blue/grey.

 

Pete

Edited by PeterB
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Well, from now on I am going to have to be extremely careful how I handle this kit!

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Thankfully there is not a lot left to go on. There will now probably be a short delay whilst I paint on the 76 enamel and wait for it to dry.

 

Pete

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Hi Peter if you don't mind me suggesting. Why don't you give the ac a light dusting of rlm76 or buff with your airbrush.  Not to close mind you and this will blend in the camo for more realism. You can use an 80/20 mix and you can't go wrong. 

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Hi Walter,

 

I often do that, particularly on day fighters such as the Bf 109/110/410 but have not bothered this time.

 

Pete

 

 

Edited by PeterB
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All the bits are now on so it just need a final coat of flat varnish.

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The swastika looks a bit strange as by that time it would normally have been a black outline one like the wing and fuselage crosses, but they seem to have stuck with solid black ones on the 88. Also it looks big but again that seems correct and it is the same size as the "jigsaw" bits included with the kit - scale 650mm which was fairly standard with the 88 according to my sources, though it could be anywhere between 500mm and 800mm it seems.

 

I was wondering why some Luftwaffe night fighters had the aerials for the FuG 220 vertical, and others like this at 45o, then I found this.

On July 13th 1944, a Ju 88G-1 coded 4R+UR belonging to 7/NG2 returning from a night patrol over the North Sea set a reciprocal compass heading and landed in error at RAF Woodbridge in Essex. This windfall provided the British not only with the aircraft but also a working example of the Lichtenstein SN2 radar, both of which had only entered service a few months earlier. It also provided evidence that the Luftwaffe had a device they called the FuG 227 Flensburg, with a wing mounted aerial array which allowed their fighters to home on the RAF Monica tail warning radar.

 

Within a short time the boffins were able to jam the version of SN2 radar fitted to the German night fighters, though the Luftwaffe were by then already developing what would become 7 different versions, each operating on a different frequency. Types I, II, and III operated in the range 64-82 MHz and types IV,V,VI and VII operated in the range 91-116 MHz and as the captured plane used a frequency of 91 MHz, Typed IV,V and VI became useless. Many kits of aircraft with the SN2 aerials have them vertical, but some such as this G6c had aerials mounted at 45º which is apparently correct for the later versions, which also had provision for a tail warning array. Normally this was mounted on the rear fuselage below the cropped rudder but some had a smaller version on top of the fin, though this may have been in association with some of the later radar fits such as Neptun.

 

Info from Ju 88 Part II in the Aircraft in Action series.

 

Pete

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  • PeterB changed the title to Junkers Ju 88 G-6c with AIMS conversion***FINISHED***

I finally got round to spraying this so I will now post in the gallery.

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I enjoyed building it more than I expected. Thanks to the organisers for giving me the chance to build another 3 kits from my stash!

 

Pete

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On 15/01/2023 at 12:42, Marklo said:

Looks great. I did a TA152 with similar radar antenna on the nose and I lost count of the number of times I knocked them off :) 

 

That is exactly why I forked out the money for a turned brass set from Master (www.master-model.pl) - you can buy them online from Hannants (in the UK) or certain auction sites - they don't snap so easily, and (so far) I have always been able to gently bend them back into position if they get snagged or bent 

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On 16/01/2023 at 23:22, Walter said:

I believe they changed the angel to 45° to improve radar efficiency. 

 

From what I have read, angling the antennae away from the vertical reduced the noise caused by Window, the strips of metallised tape being dropped by RAF bombers and decoys during the massed air raids in 1944.

 

So yes, it must have improved reception, as many late war pictures from 1944/45 show them angled at 45° on most (but not all) nachtjager - this was the birth of electronic warfare, and both sides were constantly improving their detection and jamming methods. 

 

Also by 1944, the ground controlled interception tactics the Luftwaffe used was rendered almost useless as the Freya & Wurzburg radars on the ground were usually being jammed or flooded with noise by RAF 100 group on all known radar & radio frequencies, so the Luftwaffe fighter crews had to rely more heavily on their airborne equipment alone

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23 hours ago, stevesoutar said:

 

That is exactly why I forked out the money for a turned brass set from Master (www.master-model.pl) - you can buy them online from Hannants (in the UK) or certain auction sites - they don't snap so easily, and (so far) I have always been able to gently bend them back into position if they get snagged or bent 

I bought several of them quite a few years ago but have never got round to using them as I was unsure what would be the best way to fit the aerials onto the supports -I did consider soldering at one time but don't really have the right type of low temperature iron, and did not know what type of glue would be best given how shaky my hands and eyes are getting these days. How did you fix yours and did you use some sort of jig to get them aligned?

 

Pete

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9 minutes ago, PeterB said:

I bought several of them quite a few years ago but have never got round to using them as I was unsure what would be the best way to fit the aerials onto the supports -I did consider soldering at one time but don't really have the right type of low temperature iron, and did not know what type of glue would be best given how shaky my hands and eyes are getting these days. How did you fix yours and did you use some sort of jig to get them aligned?

 

Pete

 

I have tried soldering - 1st soldered joint was an eventual success, but i didn't have a good way of soldering the 2nd fine antenna without the brass rod heating up & dropping the 1st joint !

 

So I have generally gone with superglue - just laying the central rod on a wooden cutting board, then carefully laying the aerial on top, nudging it back & forth until seems to be sitting at 90°, then gently pop a wee blob of cyanoacrylate glue on the end of a bit of wire or a cocktail stick - move the other end of the rod & repeat the process.

 

If you get the angles a bit wrong you can gently break the bond, clean it up & try again. Time consuming & fiddly, but it's worth the result if your close up eyesight is good enough to assemble them.

 

I just got a variable temp soldering iron, intended for electronics work, which has two small crocodile clips on flexible stalks and a selection of fine tips for the iron, but I haven't tried it out yet. I also haven't decided what a jig would look like if I could make one ...  probably out of wood (so I can't melt it, or stick solder to to) - but how to align the three parts AND keep the joint accessible for a soldering iron

 

I have considered making a white metal mould, but the fine parts would be hard to cast well without a centrifuge or a big drop into the mould (which would have to be hot to allow the flow) ... and the mould would have to be slightly overscale to work, but would be stronger than the plastic kit ones

 

Steve

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