1/32 Hasegawa Fw 190D-9 "Black One"

Looking good John

Good work. Since everything I say happens to you during your builds, then I know that you will finish the rest of the build without further injury!

John, knowing you're a stickler for accuracy that back of that engine sen through the wheel well was a MESS of hoses, tubes and wiriing. Basically, you could ball up a shot glass full of copper wire and chuck it in there and you would not be far off.

Thanks for those pictures Andy! I'm not sure what I'm going to do on the engine plug part. Looking back on my previous Dora, I added some tubing and pipes but I don't think it made much of a difference. You'd really have to go whole hog to replicate the mess of the real thing and I'm not real good at that type of unstructured scratch building. I'll have to think about it.

Back to the build. The insides of the fuselage have been thinned out and sanded smooth. I'll stop here for now. Once the resin cockpit has been glued together for real, I will do another round of dryfitting to the fuselage to make sure everything lines up ok.


That ribbing on the supercharger has been repaired.


I'm going spend some time in the cockpit. The completed cockpit tub will determine the fit of the fuselage so I need to get the cockpit painted before this build can move forward. It seems easier to paint this cockpit and then assemble so I am going to put together as many of the sub-assemblies as possible and paint them.

The foot pedals need to be assembled. They are comprised of both photoetch and resin components. Eagle Editions has provided two styles of foot pedals so I choose the "Early" style since Dortenmann's Dora is an early one.


The heel rest is bent to 90 degrees using tweezers.


To help bend the heel rest around a curve, I found a piece of wood dowel that approximated the curve I want follow. It's easy to push the heel rest against this circular form.



It's also possible to use tweezers for this but you have to be careful of that single joint between the heel rest and the rest of the foot pedal... you want to minimize the amount of fiddling so that this joint doesn't break.


I elected to bend the skinny straps into place using tweezers.



One more set of bends and the foot straps are attached to the resin pedal cylinders using CA glue.


The foot pedals are then glued onto the pedal hangers which are attached to the roof piece. All of this is pretty fiddly and of questionable benefit since the tight confines of the cockpit floor and the presence of the lower instrument panel will block most of this from view.


Time for some painting! The cockpit parts are attached to a makeshift parts holder (masking tape on a old sprue frame). The bigger parts can be hand held.


The majority of the cockpit will be RLM 66 Dark Grey. I give all of the parts a base coat of black and then the RLM 66. My 66 is Tamiya XF63 German Grey darkened with a bit of black.
[imagehttp://imgur.com/Fhkgi29.jpg[/img]

Once the RLM 66 is dry, I will focus on certain parts and do some detail painting. The color on the lower instrument dials looks a bit messy but the instrument faces will be covered with individually punched decals. Brush marks and paint shine will be toned later when these parts are given a flat coat.

Looks great so far John!

Very nice detail work John.

Nicely done John

Geez, those 1/32 foot pedals are nice and big!

Excellent work, great to watch!

Thanks for checking in! I put in a good day's work in the workshop as the weather here in SoCal turned overcast and chilly. The aftermarket stuff is great eye candy but boy, it takes a lot of time to slog through all of it! I'm tackling the cockpit in bits and pieces. As I finish things, I can set them aside and then go on to the next item needing attention.

The instrument panels have been painted so the next step would be to install the instrument gauges. The upper panel has larger gauges and my punch/die set does not go that big. So I'll have to do the lower instrument panel first and then do the upper when a new punch set arrives. Using a combination of leftovers from the MDC Dora cockpit set and the Airscale Luftwaffe set, I punch each individual instrument face decal and apply them one by one.


The lower instrument panel is finished off by spraying the entire panel with a clear flat and then putting a drop of clear gloss into each dial face. I have been using Alclad Aqua Gloss for my primary clear coat. Sprayed straight, it serves as a gloss. I mix in Tamiya Flat Base into the Aqua Gloss for my flat coat. It's been working ok for me but It's not ideal as the Flat Base/Aqua Gloss mix can dry with a crusty white sheen if you put too much Flat Base.


There is a small gauge under the hood so I put a decal there too.


The Revi 16B gunsight has been painted. I put a drop of Micro Krystal Klear into the optic and cut some pieces of acetate sheet for the reflector glass.


The control stick has been painted. I've added a control wire to the junction box at the front of the stick. This photo reveals a very messy backside due to a sloppy resin cast. I can either fix this or maybe.... scratch up a new one using a combination of the kit stick and the resin base and handle?


I've done some weathering on the seat... a dark pastel wash and some chipping using colored pencils. It's hard to see but I've also drybrushed some lighter colors on the seat to give it some tonal variation. I didn't spend too much time on it because it will get covered by the seat belts and oxygen supply tube.


With the colors of the seat done, I thought I should start on the seatbelts. The HGW set is a "build-it-yourself" package of fabric harnesses that you cut out and the photoetched buckles that you thread the harnesses through.


After cutting out a couple of the fabric strips with a very sharp x-acto knife, I followed the instructions and crumpled up each belt into a small ball with my finger tips. This will supposedly make the belts more limp and easier to pose. It's time consuming to thread each buckle with the strips of fabric. The folded fabric is secured using good ole Elmer's White Glue.


I was happy when I completed my first lap belt. But I realized that the HGW set is a generic one, not intended for any specific model. You have to adjust the lengths of fabric and the overlaps to the particular seat that you are using. I learned this a little too late and made the lap belt way too long.


As you can see both lap belts are on the long side. I am going to forgo using the seat attachment hardware and simply cut the belts to suit. Due to the tight fit of the seat between the cockpit sidewalls, you won't be able to see the attachment hardware anyway.

Good stuff John.

Top work John, that pit's gonna look great.

The Eagle Editions cockpit set describes the oxygen hose as being left on the seat and provides a resin connector for the end. Does anyone know what color this hose would be?

Great looking belts. I don't know for sure but I'd be inclined to paint the hose a dark grey.

Love the belts! Where did you source them from?

Robert... the HGW belts were purchased from EBay.

Thank you for visiting this build. More rain this weekend so it was a good time to be productive in my little modeling room. The lap belts have been glued onto the seat and trimmed.. I tried weathering the harness material using colored pencil but the results weren't that great.


For the longer shoulder belts, I tried a different weathering approach. Using a few different colored pencils, I randomly marked the belts and then smeared the pencil marks off using my finger tip. See bottom row of belts in the pic below. This yields a bit subtle result than marking the belts in place.


After the shoulder belts are cut out, they are crumpled up per the instructions.


The belts are threaded onto the buckles. Tapering the ends of the belts ever so slightly will help get them through the small openings in the buckles. I'm not sure if you absolutely need to crumple but I think it adds nicely to the worn effect. But be advised that vigorous crumpling my cause the fine fibers of the cut belt material to peel and curl along the edges. I trimmed this with a pair of small scissors.


I did not like the rough texture of the resin cast control stick so I cut it apart and created a new stick using a Franken-mixture of resin and kit parts.



The Revi 16B gun sight has been painted and the reflector glass pieces installed.



Dryfitting the gun sight into the instrument panel hood indicated a conflict between the gun sight and the windscreen. The rear reflector glass piece sticks up too high and doesn't let the windscreen sit flush. So some adjustments need to be made. I've started out by removing the reflector glass pieces and making new ones that are smaller. I can also see if I can make the gun sight sit lower and more forward.