Well, now that I've finally decided on which aircraft I'm doing, I've made a start on the Tamiya 1/48th scale FW190D-9. It's quite a nice kit and, despite some reports of inaccuracies, I can't find anything glaringly wrong. There is a bit of a fit problem so far though, but nothing major, and hopefully it will be resolved when the time comes.
I spent about four hours on the cockpit, painting it and building it 'out of the box', with the exception of a very few small, scratch-built additions. These were a new throttle friction knob, the original of which is moulded onto the port wall of the cockpit tub, but looks too low, the throttle lever, and seat belts. The friction knob was made from a piece of plastic rod, inserted from the outside of the tub, through a hole drilled with a pin-vice. The throttle lever was made from a piece of stretched sprue, bent to shape, and glued into a small notch cut into the throttle slide-gate. It wasn't until I went to fit the cockpit that I noticed there was a throttle hand-grip moulded onto the cockpit wall! No problem though, as this was a bit on the 'chunky' side, and was quickly despatched with the aid of a scalpel. The seat belts were added from strips of paper, glued into place and then painted, with the 'buckles' and 'adjusters' being painted-in with a 5/0 brush. I was going to make these from very thin plastic card but, when I realised that most of the cockpit would't be clearly visible once the fuselage halves were joined, I decided to take the easy way out!
The instrument panel and dials were painted by hand, with Johnson's Klear (Future) for 'glass', again using the small brush, but I had to base the dials etc on a colour illustration of a FW190A panel; but again, little can be seen once in place.
The cockpit was fitted after the fuselage halves were joined, and there was a very slight misalignment of the fuselage joint, but nothing serious. The lifting points on the rear fuselage were drilled out, again using the pin-vice.
The undercart wheel-well was painted in RLM 02 and cemented in place, and the wing tops added, and here I came across another small problem. The starboard wing root, just inboard of the moulded-on cannon, displayed a prominent gap, but a couple of spots of 'Superglue' and a few minutes clamped with an old 'Bulldog' clip sorted this.
A trial fit of the wing assembly to the fuselage uncovered another problem. The leading edge of the centre section would not slot into place, standing proud of the fuselage, and there was a gap of about 3mm at the front of the port wing root also.
Out came the scalpel and wet and dry, and the problem was solved, with another trial fit showing that the wings should now fit, although a small amount of filling might be required along the port wing root joint.
The photo's show the progress so far, and I apologise for the poor quality, as my colour-balanced light source went 'phut', and I had to use a standard bulb.
I'll post some more pics when I get some more work done on the model.