**** DONE: 1/48 Ju88G-6 NJG6 - Night War of WWII

[Crimea_River]

Looks good John and I agree about the pin marks. Absolutely no thought given to the location of these but we need to remember that the kit is over 20 years old. Need to be happy with what they gave us. I like what you did with the tail wheel. Some good references in Hartman's thread that I'll use for this area since, as you point out, it is very large and a lot will be seen.

 

[JKim]

Thanks for the comments guys. The open cowl flaps are just a too rough around the edges for my satisfaction. I'm going to go with the closed flaps for now.

Here's my first stab at painting the wheels playing around with different weathering techniques. The picture doesn't quite capture the last step, which was a dry pastel treatment on the outer quadrants to simulate dirt/dust. The tires are often neglected parts of the build and I feel like these big fat units on the Junkers are deserving of a bit more attention since they are so prominent. I've added a small piece of wire to simulate the brake line on the hub. It's ok for a first effort but the chipping's too heavy and black hubs don't pop off the rubber tires like I want so I might try something else. The wire for the brake line seems a little too thin... may upgrade to a thicker wire.

I decided to devote most of the last two days figuring out the tail gear well. I decided to keep things relatively simple and try to box off the well. Using a contour gauge, I cut out bulkhead templates on card stock and then after the card stock templates were massaged, I traced the outlines onto plastic sheeting and cut those out.

Only three bulkheads but it took me the better part of these two days to get them to fit. The contour gauge I have (6" for carpentry) is a little course for hobby work. I added stretched sprue for control wires.

Checking to see if everything fits...

 

[JKim]

Hello boys! I'm taking a look at the main gear wells now. The openings are quite large but the landing gear struts take up a lot of that space, limiting the view inside.

I'm thinking of not expending too much time on hidden details but it might be worth it if you were to open up the secondary landing gear doors, which I presume open when the gear is retracted. I'm going to focus on the landing gear mounting bracket. Now that I've shaved it of the ejector pin marks, that square piece has NO detail on it whatsoever.

Sergio pointed this out in his build... you can look through the landing gear well up into the hollow engine nacelle. It's very easy to trace out a bulkhead to block that view.

I cleaned up the engine cowling rings with putty and rescribed the panel lines. I've mounted them temporarily on the closed flaps and primered them to check for defects.

 

[rochie]

More nice work John

 

[Wurger]

 

[Wildcat]

Great update John!!

 

[Wayne Little]

Sweet!

 

[Airframes]

Nice work John. I use a 'miniature' contour gauge, which is slightly smaller than the normal carpenter's type, but still a tad awkward to use when transferring the shape to the desired material.
One idea for the main wheel hubs would be to give them a coat of satin clear varnish, which should provide good contrast, replicate the original paint finish, and improve the detail without enhancing it too much.

 

[JKim]

Thanks guys! The interior PE set should be arriving later today so I'll be starting on the cockpit soon. I'm keeping busy with other sub-assemblies. I've noticed that there are some molding "errors" on the lower wings, specifically on the outside of the engine nacelles. The panel lines disappear in an area that is noticeably rougher than the surrounding plastic. Both wings are afflicted but the starboard wing is worse. The area is sanded down and new panel lines are scribed.

I have been playing around with different finishing techniques after reading the AK FAQ book. One of the things that the book touches upon are the different finishing products that are available to the modern modeler by companies like Vallejo, AK and MIG. These include pigments, panel liners, washes, filters and stain-specific effects such as rust, exhaust, oil and dust. It's a bit overwhelming and its hard to know how specific products fit with my particular style of modeling so I'm not rushing out to buy this new stuff. But I am taking little steps to see what's out there. Yesterday, I visited the LHS and picked up two products: A pigment in Ochre and dark grey Wash. The pigment works just like the scraped pastel chalks so I won't be buying any more of that. But the Wash is nice since it was a bit cumbersome to mix up a batch of wash every time the need arose... now I have a bottle of the stuff I can use. I'll probably augment it with a couple more colors such as brown and maybe green.

Another finishing technique that I've been playing with is colored pencils. After my positive experience with paint chipping using a Prismacolor silver pencil, I wanted to explore the use of other colors. I happened to stumble upon a set of watercolor pencils sitting unused on my daughter's bookcase. After asking her permission, I stole the pencil set away to my hobby room.

So... here is the result of some experiementation on the tail wheel assembly of the Ju88. After primary painting, I used a combination of new products and techniques including detail painting using lighter and darker shades of RLM 02 to add highlight depth and replicate wear, a dark wash using the new product that I just bought, and some chipping using grey and silver pencils. Finally, using a brown watercolor pencil, I added touches of brown to the joints and corners to replicate an accumulation of dirt/rust.

And here is my second attempt with the main wheels. I almost met with disaster while wiping the paint off these tires. I used some generic lacquer thinner and it started eating into the plastic. As soon as I felt that telltale tackiness of melting plastic, I immediately set the tire aside. Luckily, no permanent damage was done to the tires and the offending lacquer thinner was left to evaporate completely off before proceeding. The brake line was re-done with a slightly thicker wire and painted red this time based on records of a restored Ju88 tire that I saw over at LSP. The tires were given a light dabbing of the Ochre pigment around the outer quadrant of the tire, which was worked into the tire with a soft brush. It has not been sealed with a clear coat as I'm not sure what effect that would have on this dry pigment work. Also, I don't have a good way to hold the tire to treat the axle side in a similar fashion.

Jumping over to the engine nacelles, I noticed that there is a shape discrepancy between the nacelle and the part that serves as an interface between the wing and the nacelle which causes some overhang. I labelled the parts to make sure that I keep the pairing intact (the nacelles themselves are interchangable) and marked the areas where the overhang is occurring. I shaved down the marked areas with a knife, while constantly fitting the two parts together to check my progress. This should save me from some awkward sanding later on.

Thanks for checking in!

 

[Airframes]

Good stuff, and thanks for pointing out that shape discrepancy on the cowlings - I'll look out for it when I get to do mine.
A couple of things which might help - first, to do the axle side of the wheels/tyres, try a piece of 'Blue-Tac', on the end of a cocktail stick, pressed onto the outer face of the wheel. This should be firm enough to allow you to rotate the wheel as you apply the colouring.
Second - I've just been looking through some of the reference photos that Guttorm supplied for Wayne's Ju-88A4 build a couple of years back. The 'sleeve' for the tail wheel oleo was finished in a pale gold colour - a mix of gold, with a small drop of silver, should replicate this nicely.

 

[Crimea_River]

Good progress John. Lacquer thinner is nasty on plastic as you have now discovered.

 

[JKim]

Thanks guys! I saw that restored tail wheel as well. I've seen some builds that utilized that pale gold for the landing gear but I think I'll stick with the RLM02. Looking back at that Ju88 reference thread lead me to add one more thing to the tail wheel well before I buttoned up the fuselage halves. I added a brown fuel dump pipe in three sections since I didn't have enough clearance in the available bulkhead holes that I had drilled out. It's probably overscale but it is buried deep enough not be noticed as such.

The fuselage halves are glued together. I also glued in the clear perspex covers on the top of the fuselage so that I could ensure a solid connection.

After getting some positive comments on the open flaps and thinking it over, I had an idea to improve the area but required ripping out all of the acetate back flaps and flap actuators. So I did it. Picked it all out with an x-acto blade. I cleaned up the edges of the flaps as best as I could. Instead of using acetate sheet for the back flaps, I just used Scotch tape. MUCH thinner, no need for glue and results in a MUCH cleaner look... I'm back to the open flaps now!

 

[Crimea_River]

Good stuff John. Trying to find evidence if any of those fuselage clear parts are supposed to be there.

 

[JKim]

Good stuff John. Trying to find evidence if any of those fuselage clear parts are supposed to be there.

I'm not sure either. My references have conflicting info. The Aero Detail No. 20 detailed plan and profile view of the earlier A-series shows intermediate aerial connections along the rear fuselage spine and identifies them as FuG10 and FuG16 deployment points but they don't show up for the G-6 line drawings. However, the Squadron in Action Part 2 shows intermediate aerials to these two points on their profile line drawing of the G-6. I also have a German language publication (Waffen Arsenal 56) that has two pictures of square tailed Ju-88's (presumably G-series nightfighters) with evidence of the rear intermediate connection just in front of the tail.

Andy... have you come across any references to a belly hatch? The 1/32 AIMS conversions to a G-6 show a semi-circular hatch on the bottom of the fuselage between the gun pod and tail wheel. None of the line drawings in my sources show the hatch but there is a profile of a G-6 (W7+AC) in the Squadron in Action book that shows the belly hatch.

I've found a few of pictures that show the hatch...

 

[Wayne Little]

Great progress...

 

[Crimea_River]

More a question of whether the clear parts were painted over or left clear. I have read, though not confirmed that the Ju88's aerial attachment points were through perspex but that they may have been painted over in many cases.

 

[Wurger]

John.. here is the hatch drawn.

 

[Gnomey]

Looks good so far John!

 

[JKim]

Thanks guys! Thanks for the drawing Wojtek! That shows me where to place the hatch. Hopefully, I have a stencil that approximates that size/shape. Would you happen to have a view of the top behind the canopy where the fuel fill ports are supposed to be? That's another area where some additional scribing is needed.

 

[Crimea_River]

Sorry John, missed your question. Here's another example: