A Ju-88 mass production attempt: A1, A4, D2, S1 and G6

[JWM]

Hi,

I noticed this GB recently, somehow I did not noticed that it started a long while ago. I had plans to join it with a massive production of 7 kits - 5 varians of Ju 88  plus Ju 188 and Ju 388. I have to reduce it to five Ju 88, still it ill be very hard to finish in time...

 

My priorities are following 

1. The Ju 88 D2 converted from A5 Zvezda kit, Hungarian markings

 

 

2. Ju 88 A1, Revell kit and Techmod decals for non-box BOB scheme

 

3. Ju 88 A4, Revell kit with Techmod African decals option

 

4. Ju 88 G6 Zvezda kit  with OWL decals

 

5. Ju 88S1 AMT kit almost OOB

 

My decals sets

 

And books with some photos of Hungarian D2 machine

 

I will try to start them in parallel and at least keep them being glued together in similar time. In finish my priorities will be more seen. I hope to finish at least three in time. Expected extension will help in next two  

 

Regards

Jerzy-Wojtek

[vppelt68]

Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! That's five times, once for each build. Knowing you, I'm sure you will make it - it's only one kit per week, and the assembly line method saves a lot of time 🙂

V-P

[PeterB]

Hi Jerzy,

 

My own build of the Zvezda G-6 may of some slight interest though I guess you will not be doing much in the way of conversion unlike me. Of course you may well have built their kits of their 88's before in which case you will know them better than I do. So far, except for some slightly vague instructions, it seems OK other that the apparently short engines and small vertical tail.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited January 2, 2023 by PeterB

[JWM]

1 hour ago, PeterB said:

Hi Jerzy,

 

My own build of the Zvezda G-6 may of some slight interest though I guess you will not be doing much in the way of conversion unlike me. Of course you may well have built their kits of their 88's before in which case you will know them better than I do. So far, except for some slightly vague instructions, it seems OK other that the apparently short engines and small vertical tail.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Pete, many thanks for this hint. I have some drawings of Ju 88 in 1/72. So far I just compared the fuselage lengths of all five and looks more or less ok... 

 

I started the inside work. There is a huge difference in detailing - the AMT "S' is really of the simplest inside, then both Zvezda and the most complicated are Revell. To be frank, for me as for 1/72 the detailing of Zvezda is perhaps the most appropriate, just because the detailing of Revell kits is far beyond what you got in other models...

 

I did some works on all five. 

 

from top - the AMT Ju88 S1, Zvezda A5 which I am going to convert into D2, Zvezda G6

 

 

And here the other angle: G, A/D, S

 

And start of two Revell fuselages:

 

Regards

J-W

 

[PeterB]

I will be interested to see this, particularly the S as I always fancied one of them. For the record I have just found a minor problem with by Zvezda G. May just have been my moulding but the belly tray cannon mount needs a bit of work as I will explain in my thread.

 

Pete

[JWM]

10 hours ago, PeterB said:

I will be interested to see this, particularly the S as I always fancied one of them. For the record I have just found a minor problem with by Zvezda G. May just have been my moulding but the belly tray cannon mount needs a bit of work as I will explain in my thread.

 

Pete

Thank you for next tip! I have looked at the Zvezda "G" fin problem and I am going to solve it by adding some spacer at the bottom of fin, so between the fins and the fuselage. This leads to very small corrections on the top and the chord at the base increases automatically.  I'd like also to compare it with Ju188 Italeri fin as well as with one from SH Ju388 - not only with drawings which I have. The engine are not that obvious, I have to compare the lengths using  a caliper. 

 

Regards

J-W

 

[PeterB]

Hi J-W,

 

Hannants are still listing the modified tail by Quickboost (Aires) which is said to be specifically for the Zvezda kit - it is quite cheap and I seem to remember that they are made in the Czech Republic so maybe you could get one fairly quickly if you wanted. However adding 2-3mm to the bottom of the kit one will solve the problem to a large extent, though the AIMS one is also a few mm wider as well.

 

Pete

[nickhenfrey]

On 02/01/2023 at 14:03, JWM said:

I noticed this GB recently, somehow I did not noticed that it started a long while ago. I had plans to join it with a massive production of 7 kits - 5 varians of Ju 88  plus Ju 188 and Ju 388. I have to reduce it to five Ju 88, still it ill be very hard to finish in time...

Omg - how can you can even think about five ju 88s?

 

I'm struggling with one!!! 

 

How do you keep all parts separate? 

 

How do you paint all those parts in parallel? 

 

How do you... 

 

Omg!

 

I'm definitely watching this one! 

 

Good luck!! 

 

 

[JWM]

8 hours ago, nickhenfrey said:

How do you keep all parts separate? 

 

Hi,

I am keeping  them in the own box, stacking the boxes on desk

I was painting the RLM-02, you may notice parts painted with this color inside boxes

1. Zvezda A5 going to be D2 (I glued also wings)

2. Zvezda G6

 

3. AMT S-1

 

4. Revell A1

 

5. Revell A 4

 

You may see, that I cut the Revell boxes to makes it possible to open from top.

 

 

 

Today I focused on enlargement of Ju88 G fin. 

Looks that it drastically too short

 

Instead of enlarging the chord and increasing the height from the top I decided to increase the height from the bottom side

 

The rudder requires a huge increase

 

And I added the Humbrol Body Putty to fill all the gaps

 

Despite my declaration on priorities I got the biggest proglress with AMT S variant.

I glued fuselage. The original  tail wheel bay is very shallow

 

I did not wanted to change the wheel construction although I wanted to make it deeper. So I drilled first small openings.

 

Then with file I make this opening larger. But forgot to a make a photo...

 

I put some body putty along the join of two fuselage halves, because it was not even. Ten I sanded it.

 

I ended the day with gluing fuselage with tail plane  and wings

 

So the S-1 seems to be the most advanced so far!

Regards

J-W

 

 

[JWM]

Hi,

The wings of both Zvezda 88s. On top of the picture the find from G is seen.

 

I am nut sure why the Zvezda engineers decided to break wings in this point. It would be better if the upper and lower parts were cut at different place, then the alignment would be much easier, simply it will be for free. Anyway it  required only delicate filling to get the joint of surfaces smooth. 

 

The Zvezda A5 going to be D2 with glued fuselage, wings and tail plane

 

The ailerons of Zveza kit have larger chord in outer part. I do not know why they did it this way. Any explanation?

 

The A5/A17 (I am doing D2 of it) has two fins in box (the A1  and A4 style) / The A1 style is lower, what is wrong accordingly to my sources. 

Both A4 and A1 style have also  a bit too small chord .

 I am going to improve it

 

The camera windows of D2 made of clearfix

 

Now the three (both Zvezda and AMT) are with wings glued to fuselage and with tail plane

 

The length of Revell  A1 and Zvezda A5 covlings are the same, although the Zvezda engines are a small fraction of mm thinner

 

I glued also the parts wings from both Revell kits (A1 and A4). The thickness of the wings (the height of the airfoil) see, to be larger in Revell kits then it is in case of Zvezda and AMT..

 

 

That is all about the progress for today. 

This is the Hungarian D2 which I am intending to build. Code of the machine  F.914. 

 

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bpfMOZCi_5k/XsPe8II7RZI/AAAAAAAAAcM/DWW_6HDLU50PbmYBxJMvbw4Us0WZLW_TQCLcBGAsYHQ/w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu/Ju88D_hungary_SCHATZ.jpg

 

The other D2 (F.915) have the late "bulged" style of canopy, and I want to have both styles (the bulged one will be in A4)

 

above in winter camo

below with different colors in code (confirmed by photo)

 To be continued

Regards

J-W

 

 

[JWM]

Few observation about the F.914 scheme

1. The code on the fuselage is painted on the freshly overpainted German code, - the splinter pattern on fuselage is disturbed

please note  that the RLM 71 (lighter) area on fuselage above the wing should go further along the fuselage with the same straight border and here a darker area appears as the background for F.9 

2. There is a trace of a white outline of swastika on fin - or am I wrong? I am talking on the light element right below the green belt, near the leading edge of rudder. 

3. the over painted area on right wing - it comes on the RLM 71 area, so it must be some other, much lighter color. In the Hungarian publication it is said, that it is a trace of over painted German cross, I doubt. The crosses were on Ju 88 much more toward the wingtips, for me this is a faded 71 (similar darkness because similar angle of light reflection like on tail)  and the over painted area is the dark spot with Hungarian insignia. 

 

I think that the original pattern is well weathered and the over pained areas are done with fresh 71. This will be a bit a challenge in painting...

Cheers

J-W

 

 

[KRK4m]

Just FIVE and you dare call it mass production? 🤣

And where are the 88C night fighter, 88P gunship, 88R Zerstorer and above all the stretched 88H? You have to follow @diamant - his Dad would probably build 30 of these Ju88s. But he doesn't build Luftwaffe machines...

By the way (with your stash of almost 10 Liberators in mind) I'm waiting for the B-24/PB4Y groupbuild. This is going to be a challenge for your cabinets 😉

Cheers

Michael

Edited January 5, 2023 by KRK4m

[JWM]

4 hours ago, KRK4m said:

And where are the 88C night fighter, 88P gunship, 88R Zerstorer and above all the stretched 88H? You have to follow  @diamant - his Dad would probably build 30 of these Ju88s. But he doesn't build Luftwaffe machines...

Yeah, the father of Satniago ( @diamant  ) is exceptional, he is in a  special league, no one can compere with him... The five variants of one construction is my longest series so far I think. 

 But I have not said, that this five ends my collection of Ju-88's family. As I mentioned in stash I have Italeri Ju-188 A/E (as also Italeri Ju88, this kit has bigger wheels than all others Ju-88 family) and a Special Hobby Ju-388 L. I think I need for sure a Mistel and some Ju-88 H variant. Perhaps a P as well, more likely then C. But Mistel and H are for sure in my purchasing plans. I'd like to do one Hasegawa, so maybe a second 188?

 

Anyway - today's progress report: 

 

The modified fin for D2 (right) compared with Revell A4 one:

 

 

I cut out the opening to the gondola for my D2 . Please note also the imitation of cameras.

 

The belly part is glued

 

The enlarged fin of Ju88G, here compared with the fin of Italeri 188

 

Once I have bought the instrument panel by Polish company Yahu 

 

I have only one of them, so I used it for G (not a big difference were in instrument panel between G and C, I hope) 

On position:

 

 

The engine nacelles housing wheel bays unfortunately are visually different among those three producers. The most narrow is  AMT (middle), then Zveza (the bottom one) and the wider in Revell (top).

 

I give up with large corrections, I will try do diminish a bit the Revell ones.  BTW - on above you can see the final opening for the tail wheel in S (middle).

 

I opened the shells rejector in G cannon's gondola

I constructed some channel inside

 

Finally I glued base airframes of both Revell kits. Did also sanding...

 

 

To be continued

Regards

J-W

 

 

 

[AaCee26]

On 1/4/2023 at 11:54 PM, JWM said:

Now the three (both Zvezda and AMT) are with wings glued to fuselage and with tail plane

Hi Jerzy,

 

It looks like that the Zvezda ailerons have the late-type trim tabs. I think D-2 had the early one with straight tailing edge.

 

Apologies to bring possible bad news!

 

Cheers,

 

AaCee

[JWM]

Hi,

I detailed inside of both Revell A: A1 and A4. I used Tamiya tape painted off white for seat belts instead of provided decals, just to have a similarity with the others 88s.

 

A1

 

 

And A4 

 

Anyway, the Revell model have a orders of magnitude more detailed inside while compare to Zvezda or AMT kit (as also Hasegawa - I do ot have any of the latest but I've seen in net)

 

The AMT S1 has BMW engine and should have a characteristic fan behind the spinner. It is not provided. So I found in Revell Ju 290 such fans and will try to copy it in resin

 

The main issue with D2, G and both A is that the engines are differently (a bit or even more) modelled by Zvezda and Revell. The length is same (74 mm from from of radiator to trailing edge of wing) however the cross section is different (In Revell the lower part is wider then in Zvezda). But I think I will not correct it due to a huge complication of such scratch conversion. I do not know how badly it will be noticeable on completed model. For sure the huge problem is with exhaust width (or perhaps height - when you look from side of plane). 

On above the left one is Revell the right one is Zvezda an in middle you have a reference drawing.  So revell is about half thick compare to Zvezda, but also Zvezda is too wide. 

I decided to improve. I noticed, that there is an aftermarket set of exhausts but is is not available on demand, so I will have to wait too long maybe to fit the work in GB time framework.

So I used a saw and cut the all exhaust (8 Revell and 4 Zvezda) along the symmetry line (at least this was what I wanted to do)

The Zvezda ones I just glued back - the thickness  of saw did the job - below you can see on left original width, on right back glued together after cut:

Now it has 2.5 mm what I think is what it should be. 

 

Here is the set of Revell exhaust after cut - each row nontain one single exhaust. I glued them om 0.5 mm sheet.

Some not survived it well but I will work on them...

 

I glued them back

 

And started to bring them proper shapes back

 On top you can see the Zvezda one. If I will be not happy with result I will try to do a resin copies of Zvezda, but this is a beta variant...

22 hours ago, AaCee26 said:

It looks like that the Zvezda ailerons have the late-type trim tabs. I think D-2 had the early one with straight tailing edge.

 

Apologies to bring possible bad news!

 

Cheers,

 

AaCee

 

Many thanks for this answer. However, I did not found any photo of Ju88 with such shape of ailerons, even the late variand like "S1" did not show it

So I simply cut it out bringing the aileron trailing edge the straight line shape...

 

To be cont.

Regards

J-W

 

 

 

[vppelt68]

Amazing job with the exhausts. I don't like the Zvezda exhausts at all, but I've been quite happy with the Revell parts.

[JWM]

8 minutes ago, vppelt68 said:

Amazing job with the exhausts. I don't like the Zvezda exhausts at all, but I've been quite happy with the Revell parts.

Thanks! The sad finding for me was, that those nice looking, very fine Revell exhaust are of wrong proportions...The Zvezda one  looks much worse, but are perhaps mire accurate... that is a paradox

[diamant]

On 1/5/2023 at 6:25 PM, JWM said:

Yeah, the father of Satniago ( @diamant  ) is exceptional, he is in a  special league, no one can compere with him... The five variants of one construction is my longest series so far I think. 

Hi. Thank you very much for your comments. I really enjoy seening you are doing 5 models at the same time. I am sure that they will look really great together.

 

On 1/5/2023 at 1:33 PM, KRK4m said:

And where are the 88C night fighter, 88P gunship, 88R Zerstorer and above all the stretched 88H? You have to follow @diamant - his Dad would probably build 30 of these Ju88s. But he doesn't build Luftwaffe machines...

My father only built 13 Ju88. lol I posted them here some time ago. He is building 3 captured Dornier Do217

 

Cheers

Santiago

[JWM]

15 minutes ago, diamant said:

My father only built 13 Ju88. lol I posted them here some time ago. He is building 3 captured Dornier Do217

oh yeah, the captured machines are in the range of your collection! Excellent set! I really do like them

Regards

J-W

 

[PeterB]

13 hours ago, diamant said:

Hi. Thank you very much for your comments. I really enjoy seening you are doing 5 models at the same time. I am sure that they will look really great together.

 

My father only built 13 Ju88. lol I posted them here some time ago. He is building 3 captured Dornier Do217

 

Cheers

Santiago

Excellent!

 

Did he by any chance ever model the captured one with the wing problem? I forget where I read it (Eric Brown or R.V. Jones?) but apparently fairly early in the war the Brits had salvaged parts from more than one wreck to make a flying one but it handled badly. When they showed it to some Luftwaffe POW's they fell about laughing - seems the wings were from two different versions of the 88, maybe short span A1 and long span A4!😆 Difficult to tell from the pic but could it be the brown/green one?

 

Pete

Edited January 9, 2023 by PeterB

[diamant]

On 1/8/2023 at 7:26 PM, JWM said:

oh yeah, the captured machines are in the range of your collection! Excellent set! I really do like them

Regards

J-W

 

Thanks. Yes, we have our own captured air force!!! 

 

13 hours ago, PeterB said:

Did he by any chance ever model the captured one with the wing problem? I forget where I read it (Eric Brown or R.V. Jones?) but apparently fairly early in the war the Brits had salvaged parts from more than one wreck to make a flying one but it handled badly. When they showed it to some Luftwaffe POW's they fell about laughing - seems the wings were from two different versions of the 88, maybe short span A1 and long span A4!😆 Difficult to tell from the pic but could it be the brown/green one?

Hi Pete,

 

I will ask my father since it ring me a bell but not completely sure.

 

Cheers

Santiago

[JWM]

Hi,

I decided to enlarge a bit the nacelles housing wheels bay in "S". It is is the wrong moment for this, bacause I am already too advanced in construction. What I can do now is only an overlayer on it.

I added some Milliput

The sanding will be difficult, I know it is a bit stupid way (or not clever - the simpler will be to construct it before gluing to wing) , nut I think I need it...

 

I put the back plate to the special aerial on fuselage 

 

I started to construct engines.

 

On right two resin copies of special fans are visible. 

 

 

I will replaced also spinners by the copied from the Italeri Ju88... The one from box are too conical IMHO. 

 

Initially the engines for A1 looked OK for me

I glued them to rest of machine

 

But then I started work on Zvezda kits and realized, that the front cooler there in a bit immersed (moved back) into cowling. Here is G (I added some elements on back side):

 

I looked on photos and it seems better. So I had to dismount all what I did for A1...  

 

Painting of wheels (visible is also "D"  by Zvezda)

 

Here is another shot on D

 

And its engines

 

Here is Revell's A4

 

And Zvezda G

 

To be cont.

Regards

J-W

 

[vppelt68]

Excellent job, J-W!

[JWM]

16 hours ago, vppelt68 said:

Excellent job, J-W!

Many thanks!

I shifted radiators backward a bit and assembled engines to rest of plane (A1 variant)

 

Next I was assembling engines of Revell A4 variant, after modification of exhausts width some use of file was required to enlarge the with of the slot for exhaust. Then similar like in case of A1 - the front radiator panel was shifted  a bit back

Between the exhausts I put a rod to prevent accidental collapse when it will be already assembled on site. Earlier I did the same for A1 engines. 

 

And engines glued to rest of model

 

I glued the fans on back side of propellers in BMW engines of S1. To make a room for fans I have to short the fronts of engines. 

 

 

 

I assembled also engined for both Zvezda Ju88 (D and G)

 In all models props are of course rotating. 

 

After sanding the enlarged  nacelles housing the wheel bays are more similar to at least Zvezda one (the Revell are a bit bigger, but I have to live with it...

 

Still some more work is needed on that.

 

BTW - the external bomb racks (ETS -was it their  German abrasion?) for "S" are completely different that those for both "A". Can anybody tell that it was like that? The "S" can carry two 1000 kg bombs whereas "A" can carry maximum 500 kg, moreover the "S" was aerodynamically improved so maybe it could look differently, but I do not know it at all....

Any help on that would be appreciated.

Regards

J-W

 

[vppelt68]

J-W, a Ju 88 A-4 could and also sometimes did carry two 1000kg "Hermans".

 

Great idea to add the sprue rod between the exhausts. I had to pry open a cowling just because of that. Now I know how to prevent that in my future Ju 88 builds. V-P