Focke-Wulf Fw 190D-9 Braunen 4, W.nr.500647 - Me/ Fw Group Build

So... Any updates? I'm curious to know i) how you're doing you're engine mounts and ii) forming the conical radiator ramp... I've attempted two different approaches for each, without satisfaction - working on Radiator fairing attempt 3 now; it MAY add between 0.5mm - 0.25mm to the overall length of the a/c, but should atleast look the part. I probably removed 0.25mm when I true'd up the cowling, immediately behind the radiator flaps anyway...

Well to be fair to the JaPo lads they do say "the camouflage pattern of 'Brown 4 +-' cannot easily be established..." after which they make their own suppositions.
Personally I prefer Crandall's interpretation in Vol 1 (pp 284,285) of his mighty opus but there really can't be a right and wrong here.
Crandall bases his profile on other known 500 series Doras,most notably 'Blue 12,W.Nr 500570. There is an in depth analysis,on page 239 of the same volume,of a colour photograph of an intact 'Blue 12' which is quite convincing.
This gives the blue/green version of RLM 76 (or RLM 84,let's not go there!) on lower surfaces except of the wings which have a front part and gear doors in RLM 75,the rest natural metal.
Upper surfaces RLM 82/83 though wings may be RLM 74/75.
The only part in the 'normal' RLM 76 is the rudder.
Cheers
Steve

G'day Dan and Steve!

Cheers for your thoughts, and attention to the thread. Work and other problems put this and the Mistel project on hold - not out of the woods yet either, hence the rare visits to the forum.

Have to say, I can't offer an opinion of 500647's 'correct' scheme, as I don't know which version to believe myself yet.


Be keen to see your build progress Dan, and how your engine details shape up. I have ideas for how I'll tackle them, but will see how practical they are at the time.

Evan

Steve - cheers; something else to add into the mix... "Blue 12" is probably a good reference to go look at. From memory however, it shows signs of red oxide primer - things like that plant seeds in my head that suggest the a/c may have been a 'fixer-up-er' at one point; which generally negates any cam consistencey. BUT on the positive, it VERY rare at that point of the war that any rpairs 'properly' resprayed the a/c... As most ppl here will agree, there is rarely any right or wrong regarding D-series camo's (as long as the 'tonals' are in the right neighbourhood) - I just like to convince myself of the most likely approach before diving in...

Evan - I'll take some happy-snaps in the next day or two for you.

I must admit, having almost now got a pretty good radiator dump ramp (cone or whatever ppl want to it) now, i would suggest if possible, for you to model your radiator flaps closed and build the whole radiator section solid. I consider myself LUCKY in that "Black <4" has the right upper access door closed, so I can use that as an anchor point for my radiator ramp and cowling, which is an obvious advantage in keep the length of the thing correct. It did take 5 goes to get it right (two of which I admit failed because my maths on calculating the correct cone angles was just wrong!) - while my 'working' ramp was rolled from thinned sheet, help in a jig, the most successful of the failures was the heat formed ramp. Thus. I suggest getting on a hobby lathe or drill press and forming some 16mm or (preferably) wider diameter dowel, into a former.

I'm also having issues with the Aires engine; firstly it seems a bit long, so I have very cunningly shortened it about 0.5mm - 0.75mm - it also has a pipe at the lower-rear-middle of the engine that does not appear to be present in the Fw 190D-9's Jumo 213A-1, and if left there, will make contact with the small re-enforcing structure between the rear half of the main wheel cut out's; I'm reluctant to remove it just yet though (until I can confirm this to be true). Also to help with engine bay size, I've added 0.5mm shims to the points on the radiator cowling that attach it to the rest of the a/c.

The only tricksey part left that I can see, are the main engine mounting beams (of which I should only need to detail one of). After some failed attempts in 1mm and 0.5mm sheet, I have ordered some 0.25mm sheet, having noticed the way the main brace attaches to the mounting beams - plan is to sandwhich 5 layers together (so I can create the three 'teeth' of the joint with just the layers), using the top layer to form the 'shapes' on the outher face of the mount. I can see this part REALLY sucking, but it is the most noticable part in the engine bay...

Else my wheel wells, rudder access panel (and internal detail), auxilary tank access panel (and internal detail), MG 151 ammo bays, engine bay firewall, whing spar and cockpit is done; flaps have been made (the Eduard 1:72 metal flaps actually go together quite well, once you figure out the little tricks to them), all control surfaces have been removed, fuel cell bays are in progress (front wall, rear wall and top are done - I ended up having to thin the plastic cockpit floor down to be paper thin )

Otherwise, all is going to plan... Just waiting on a set of AiRes MG 131's (for the price, you cant really justify scratching building them), so I can do the fuselage gun bay. Those engine mounts are scaring me tho... At least the scheme for this a/c is well documented and generally agreed upon, and having been a 'fixer-up-er' too, most of the stencilling is gone, making life easier again...


Dan

This is interetsing stuff. Being somewhat of a newbie on late war LW camo, I was rather suprpised to see 5 profiles, including Brown 4, in my Eduard large fin Dora kit sporting a dark gray (RLM 75?) on the undersides of the wings in front of the spar. This seems to be an accepted fact. Can someone expand on what was behind this odd choice of colour in this area?

Seems to be just a wrapping around of the lower wing camoflage colour, as part of efficency and paint saving measures... There are a number of different D-9 underwing camo's, with the only really consistant part being the Ailerons were RLM76. One one end of the spectrum there is complete RLM76 (as earlier Fw 190's used); then there is dark 'leading edge' (with RLM76 gear doors) and bare metal all the way back; there there is a scheme where the front half of the wing is the dark colour, and the rest is bare metal (not including gear doors, which were usually in RLM76 or light primer) and variations on those... Sometimes the edges were hard, sometimes feathered. Sometimes the 'edge' would go through the middle of the wingtip cap, sometimes the whole cap was the dark colour.

As for the colour, most of the time it seems to be agreed that its RLM75, however some will argue it could also be RLM81 (likely when the upper camo is RLM81/83) and others again argue its a brown primer colour, distinct from RLM81.

But why was this done? As above to save time and money! The wing sets could be painted by the subcontractor and sent else where for final joining - painting the front of the underside of the wing the same as the first of the upper camo colours would provide the required front edge protection, speed up painting and leaving the remainder of the wing bare metal, would save paint and weight. The rear half of the wing was not really needed for ground or air concealment... The main hassle is, alot of stuff out there continues to insist on complete RLM76 lower surfaces, which in the most part, is wrong.

Thanks for the explanation!

OK well, my current radiator dump ramp/cone, while pretty damn close to 'Good to Go', just doesnt quite work. Attaching it to the remnants of the fwd fuselage has distorted it ever so slightly - but enough that if the radiator cowling is added, things arent going to properly line up... So its coming off and I might have to go back to the original plan of building the ramp inside the radiator cowl - will take some pics first, before I destroy things...

Dan

For you Evan, before I rip the Radiator Dump Ramp/Cone off the front of it, is where I am at... You will note that I have now managed to chip the rear corner of the gun-trough panel but I will worry about that later I suppose. The plan is now to go back and build something inside the radiator cowling, which can just be attached once the bulk of the engine and etc is in. But aw well... To the pics...

i) Fuselage as is, with the big-ass (and about to get cut off) Radiator Ramp - note the recently chipped rearmost corner of the gun-trough panel


ii) Another view of the same..


iii) Showing the top half of the engine bay firewall, and the beginning of the fuel cell bays - the 'roof' is only attachedat the rear edge at the moment, and thus flaps about a little. It will eventually be flush with the cockpit floor...


iv) Sitting on the wings, showing the complete firewall+spar (quite proud of how I managed to do that actually), the removed control surfaces, opened up wheel wells and you can just see the side of the MG151 ammo bays entering into the wings...


v) The bean running down the middle of the firewall is the first part of the central mounting for the MG131 ammo boxes... I cant beleive how much of a hassle the Radiator Dump Ramp is...


And now to go and cut it off!


Dan

... and I just cut my finger open with a brand new blade, trying to remove said part!!! damn...

Very nice on the model, welcome to the club with the )#(#@*$( blade!

Evan, if you still need a detail of the starboard instrument panel I may have what you need. I got In the Cockpit I and II and in #2 there is a D9 cockpit shot. If you still need it PM me you E-mail address and I'll send you a picture.

vikingBerserker: cheers - not the first time (well, the first time modelling for about 17 years, considering this is the first project I've done in 17 years!) and wont be the last! The big white radiator ramp is now gone... Working on a segmented version now tho; made from little circles of 0.5mm and 2.0mm sheet, with the remants of a heat formed cone in there too...

Aaron and Evan: you sure you want to put a heap of effort into a 1/72 Fw 190 pit? The pit in my project looks more like an A-8 pit, but with the amount of it you can see, I don't (personally) feel its worth doing much with. The only corrections I did, was on the side panels, removing some of the obviously redunant stuff and adding things like throttle... Even then, you can barely see the throttle - which was formed with three bits of plastic, shaped and glued in place.

Dan

That's some seriously good work going on there!

Re Red oxide primer on "Blue 12" there's a small area visible on one of the gear doors (Stbd.)

Just to touch on the primer question(s) above.
Mid/late war (I'd have to check a date) the Focke-Wulf factories were using the patented Warnecke Boehm (I can't do an umlaut!) resin based camouflage paint,either direct from W&B or a licensed producer. This was supposed to be a one coat application needing no primer thus saving time and weight. When Jerry Crandall showed Dr Pomper (ex W&B) pictures of aircraft with peeling paint the doctor said, "either that is not our paint or the metal wasn't clean when our paint was applied."
This paint was for aluminium and magnesium alloy surfaces. Wood or steel components may well have been given a primer. There are colour pictures showing what looks like a red paint of some kind over the attachments of the extra armour,obviously not aluminium, on the cockpit sides of some Fw190 A-8 "Sturmbock".
The only primer officially used at this time was the Red Oxide RLM 45 used for cloth covered control surfaces. As usual exceptions abound!
There are aircraft which show a red oxide colour around panel lines (I'm thinking more of late Bf109s) but I suspect that this is infact a putty applied to joints between panels.
Cheers
Steve

stona : you're quite correct re: the reson based paints used - I too have read about the Warnecke Böhm coatings (I've emailed back and forth with German's for years about some of my academic research stuff, thus learnt all my 'umlaut shortcuts'; for example, ü -> Alt+0252 meaning Hold down [Alt] and type [0] [2] [5] [2] on the numeric keypad; ä -> Alt+0228, ö -> Alt+0246, ü -> Alt+0252, ß -> Alt+0223, etc) - thus, if the Warnecke Böhm coatings were being exclusively used (thus negating the need for any other coatings on the production line), then the colour sometimes described as 'cream primer' and the 'light grey/green' are variants of RLM76 or the mysterious RLM84*.

The Red Oxide that has reportedly been seen on some a/c is supposedly nothing more than a field repair/corrosion control measure - depot level repairs were supposed to paint only the repaired section in the resin coatings - so you'd expect the red oxide to have been used if rivets or fasteners had been replaced, or simply as an expedient means to cover bare metal.

As for the good work, well I've got parts of the next version of my radiator dump ramp setting now (two of four 'rings'), while I have been drawing up a scale Engine Mount that I am thinking about Photo-etching... I've just printed off the final test set of masks and am going over things now with a set of calipers - if all looks good, i'll transfer it to some brass and etch in the next day or so. The plan is to layer the Brass (5 or 10 thou) onto two layers of 0.5mm plastic (thinning the plastic when the brace member attaches to form the three 'teeth') and go from there! This excercise has also shown me how depressing the Verlinden 1/48 Fw-190D-9 Engine Set is as well, missing a lot of the details that I am trying to get in these Engine Mounts and Radiator - while its no longer the most expensive kit on the market, I can see me having to enlarge the etchings for the Mounts to 1/48 and knocking out another set when I build that!

Dan

In addendum to the above re: Verlinden Fw 190D-9 kit, there isn't much more you get in it these days than you do in the Eduard Kits - even the Weekend Editions have the Wing Root and Fuselage Gun bays open, all the detail looking down and up into the engine bay (from wheel wells and gun bay), better cockpit, etc... All you dont get from Eduard is a complete engine/radiator; tho kit bash it with a Dragon kit (one of those that still comes with the full engine and you have the basis of something pretty cool!

Zaggy said:

The Red Oxide that has reportedly been seen on some a/c is supposedly nothing more than a field repair/corrosion control measure - depot level repairs were supposed to paint only the repaired section in the resin coatings - so you'd expect the red oxide to have been used if rivets or fasteners had been replaced, or simply as an expedient means to cover bare metal.
Dan

Click to expand...

Indeed. I saw a picture recently of a Hurricane wing (IIRC) undergoing restoration. It looked like it had been pre-shaded due to the lines of anti-corrosion paint applied along the rivet lines.

I admire your perseverance with the scratch built parts. I'm sure it will look great in the end.

Cheers
Steve

I'll share again - unless this is too much like high-jacking the thread?

As above, radiator dump ramp was removed, so I've been able to mock up the Jumo 213A-1 in the engine bay. What you see in front in the masks that I'm going to try and etch in some 0.005" Brass - I was considering trying some 0.022" Copper (see below everything), but i think thats a bit too heavy - 0.010" would have been just right, but I have none on hand. When printed out, the etching masks are smaller than I expected! My only real experience in the last 15 years has been etching circuit boards; this is probably twice as fine as most of that stuff as well as being DOUBLE SIDED (obviously a PCB can be double sided, but you can etch one side at a time, whereas this needs to be done simultaneously), but we'll see how we go. Its too late at night now to go transferring the mask and mixing up batches of Ammonium Persulphate (my etchant of choice) so that will have to happen tomorrow...

On that subject, anyone here have experience etching parts for modelling? It seems most manufacturers supply nickel-silver frets these days (and not 'Brass') - I've also read that Ferro-Chloride is a better etchant for small parts, but no further reasoning or proof was provided. However, first attempts will be with the materials on hand - acetate, 0.005" Brass and Ammonium Persulphate!

Great work Dan.

Edit: Overlapped my post with yours. I have no experiencew with etching parts but hopefully someone will post something. It would be a handy thing to learn. You mentioned "printing masks". What do you mean by that?

To successfully etch you need to apply a protecting layer to the surface of the Brass - obviously to stop that part of the brass being dissolved by the etching chemicals. My first PCB's (like 18 years ago) were done by drawing on to the brass with an 'Etch-Resist' pen - since then I have used specialist thermal transfer paper (cant remember what its called, but its blue) onto which you print your layout, then transfer it to the brass with an iron and my latest attempts (which are in part thrifty as well) involve laser printing onto overhead trasfer acetate; the toner is then transfered by iron to the brass... which is then etched...

In this instance, the 'printing masks' (think 'printed circuit board') is the acetate film + toner, that I will shortly 'iron on' to the brass. In the above picture, you'll see the black 'PE Fret' looking masks, all alligned and ready to go - yes, there is two layers there, which you maybe able to see (the top layer of the mounting arms has an edge with some circles down the centre it, where the bottom later is solid)...


D