**** DONE: GB-37 1/48 Bf109E-4B - Helicopters / Military a/c of BoB 1940

[fubar57]

Great info here. Model looks great as always

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks Geo. A bit stalled right now but will get back soonish.

 

[Crimea_River]

Looking good Andy.......
Note that the supercharger intake louvre and 'frame' were left in bare metal, I think steel - but you probably have that in hand.

I'd like to explore this comment a bit further as I'm struggling with the bare metal idea - I don't "have it in hand". This supercharger intake on the E was built on a frame that remained in place when the cowl was removed

Now, if I were a lazy ground crew member given the task of panting the nose yellow, I would remove the cowl and paint the cowl yellow and not bother with the frame that holds the intake. Now, if I were a fastidious ground crew member, or one commanded by a fastidious Technical Officer, I would probably paint the frame and the entire intake, save for possibly the grilles, entirely in yellow so that the vertical line defining the cowl all the way around the nose is consistently yellow forward of that line.

Furthermore, before the introduction of the yellow nose concept, what would have been the surface protection for this intake and structure. I have studies a number of wartime pictures (reliable) and profiles (not so much) and observe the following:

Area 1 above looks to be either painted or unpainted. Why would it be unpainted?

Area 2 above looks to be either painted or unpainted. Why would it be unpainted?

Area 3 above looks to be always painted.

What I can't get my head around is that these 3 areas, which are part of the same assembly, apparently have differnt surface treatments. What's more, I don't get why ANY part of this assembly wold be left in natural metal.

Wartime pics for reference:

Comments eagerly awaited!

 

[Airframes]

I think I've seen pics of the intake grill painted with the yellow, but I might be wrong, getting confused with colour profiles, but I've seen most pics with the yellow (or white) cowling where the grill appears to be un-painted, with the same contrast on aircraft in the various 'normal' camouflage colours, without the coloured cowling.
As far as I know, the front frame and 'gills' were steel, or at least a different alloy from the main assemblies, and were separate from the 'moulded' housing of the intake trunking, the latter being attached to the removable panel, with the grill assembly being attached separately, above the lower, fixed panel. part of the forward structure.
Most wartime pics show a distinct difference in tone between the intake grill assembly, and the surrounding area, suggesting that the assembly was bare metal, and there seem to be more pics suggesting this than those that may possibly suggest otherwise.
Given that the assembly was bare metal, and especially if it was steel or stainless steel, then the water-based, 'distemper' type of coating used to 'paint' the yellow cowling would not adhere very well, if at all. There's also the possibility that this was left un-painted to avoid any possibility of flaking or damaged paint being ingested into the supercharger.
The pic below is by no means a reliable reference, showing the restored but un-painted grill and intake on the Emil at Duxford, but it does show the assembly and the tone of the intake grill. The B&W version shows the contrast as would be expected in a period shot.
The other, wartime pics, certainly suggest something between bare metal, a darkish bare metal, or perhaps a very dark grey or black finish.
I've painted this grill area in a steel colour on every Emil model I've built to date.

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks Terry. There is certainly some evidence to support the are metal idea. Not sure why such a part would be steel though so I'll go with a dark aluminum as a compromise. The flaking paint ingestion theory makes sense to me so that could explain it.

Question now is the extend of the bare metal. I can't seem to get pics of the top of the box housing the grille. Is the whole box bare or just the grille and a narrow strip behind it? I would tend toward painting the entire box NMF since the plate just above the box (my area 1 in the diagram) appears to be unpainted - see your pic of the damaged JG27 machine.

 

[Airframes]

The 'box' or intake trunking was normally painted in the relevant colour - if the area here was yellow, then it would be yellow, if camouflaged, then the cammo colour, if bare metal, then most likely bare metal. However, I'm not sure if this component was metal, or moulded from that semi-flexible laminated material that preceded glass-fibre. If the latter, and I think it possibly was, then it was probably in a light grey primer if left un-painted.
The grill and surrounding frame, immediately in front of the 'box', would both be the same finish, some sort of bare metal.

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks for taking the time to explain Terry. My fault but I think my unofficial parts terminology has caused us to talk about different parts but nonetheless, I think we agree on the NMF extent after I having looked at your latest 109E build. I painted the parts that we are talking about dark aluminum as shown below. Let me know if we are not on the same page.

In comparing Eduard's representation of this area with actual pics, it's evident that they got the detail a bit incorrect as the fixed grille section actually extends a small amount aft of the rest of the engine cowl so there should be a small step in the panel line there. A bit of a complicated fix, especially at this stage so I'm going to leave it alone.

So, I've now started on the decals and Eduard's kit decals are behaving beautifully with Solvaset, settling into the panel lines and rivets quickly with no trapped bubbles whatsoever. The only decals on the underside of the aircraft are the crosses and the radiator stencil.

I got into a groove and moved onto the uppers as well, finishing off the crosses and wing walk lines. I decided against keeping the masked swastika squares. After looking closer at the reference pic it appears that some of the mottles appear behind the insignia so I masked off the adjacent surfaces and resprayed the fin with 65 and some limited mottles.

That's all I got done today. Comments always welcome and thanks for looking in.

 

[Wurger]

 

[turbo]

Shaping up nicely Andy

 

[fubar57]

Very nice

 

[Airframes]

Good stuff Andy, an yes, the supercharger intake components on your model are exactly as I tried to describe.

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks guys. Hope to get more done tonight.

 

[Crimea_River]

All remaining decals are now on. I used the Eduard kit decals for everything but the Black 6, the "Achtung Anfänger" script and the "Verschnupfte Rabe" shield of JG51 for which I used the Kagero decals. These ended up being beautifully printed but a tad thick and therefore less reactive to the decal solution but they eventually settled down.

Here is a close-up of the shield and swastika. The background on the shield is actually a light blue/grey on the decal sheet but turns out to be almost white when applied.

Oh, and I installed the tail wheel to lessen the chance of the fragile yoke being broken. The rudder actuator cables were also brush painted in Steel but I will need to touch up around this opening and on the strut. Also, the jack point hole was drilled out.

"Beware Beginners"!

The reference pic actually shows the starboard side of the aircraft and the script can be seen there. It's very likely that it would have appeared on the port side as well. At this point, you can also see that I removed the mask from the quarter panel, drilled an angled hole, and inserted a piece of brass tube with the end cut on a slant to represent the flare tube. This was secured with CA glue.

The flare tube with an initial coat of paint. The quarter window would have been replaced with a metal plate and so was therefore painted. At the moment, the detail here isn't very clean in the closeup so further work is needed to tidy this up a bit.

Trim tab stencil:

And finally, the frame numbers which were a pain in the butt. With the decals now on, I'll seal them with another clear coat and add a bot more 71 mottling as Black 6's contemporaries were quite dark on the sides.

Thanks once again for visiting!

 

[fubar57]

Looks great. I've never really understood the little fuselage numbers. I know they represent the stations but someone should have been able to memorize the individual sections

 

[Donivanp]

Great stuff, great work Andy as always. Geo, you may or may not know this but the frame/station numbers are used for weight and balance. Each aircraft has a formula used where you take a given number (1, 10, 100, 1000 etc...) and used the station/frame number and the weight of the item. I don't recall it now (that was 20 years ago) but if I recall you multiply the weight with the station and divide by the standard number. This gives you an representative number of a weight. the further forward of the MAC it will represent less weight and further aft heaver.

 

[Airframes]

Shaping up to be another beaut, Andy.

 

[Wurger]

 

[turbo]

Coming to life nicely Andy

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks everyone. Hope to finish this project off this week.

 

[Crimea_River]

Today I gave the model a dark grey panel wash and finished off the bomb.

Let's start with the bomb. I started yesterday by applying a base coat of dark grey and a gloss coat.

I figured that this would be a good chance to try the salt technique as I had never done this before. With the gloss coat fully cured, I brushed on some water and sprinkled on some table salt in a random pattern. This was allowed to dry.

The bomb then got a coat of a slightly lighter grey and, when that was dry, the salt was rinsed away completely revealing a blotchy finish of dark greys, which I liked but unfortunately forgot to photograph. I then cut some strips of spare yellow decals and applied them to the tail cone and gave the bomb a matte coat which effectively nullified the blotch effect achieved by the salt. So, my first trial salt method proved to be ineffective though some of it can be barely seen if you look closely. I then sponged on some silver to make the bomb look like it had been rolled around on gravel and then give it a final blast of an ultra-thinned coat of dusty brown. This is the finished product:

On to the model proper, I started on the underside with the wash for which I used a slurry of water, dish soap and white and back pastel powder. The wash was applied liberally, allowed to dry and then wiped away with a damp tissue in the direction of the airflow. Here we have the underside with the port wing wiped off and the starboard still drying:

The uppers wer given the same treatment and here's a look. I like how the fine rivet details get picked up, adding depth to the finish.

Here's the underside again. I'll do a bit more streaking on this after I give the entire model another gloss coat to seal the wash.

Before gloss coating, I think I will tweak the dark green mottling a bit. Yeah, I know, I should have done that before the wash but it's no big deal to wash these few areas again.

Thanks again for your interest everyone.