Revell Junkers Ju 88A4 - Part V

After putting all the small bits and pieces into place, the kit is ready for its first coal of clear varnish in preparation for decals. It has to be said that the belly copula sub-assembly is something of a miniature nightmare. Seven parts, five of them of clear plastic, two of which need to be almost completely painted in the end - why complicate things like that? And the only fitting comment for the fact that Revell chose to split a tiny machine gun sited in its rear in two minuscule parts is 'ridiculous'.

All right, rant mode off... just remember to dry-fit the belly copula often before you pick up the glue!

Not very keen on having to drill my own position holes
before being able to fit dive breaks in place.

I'm sure it can be done a lot better, but the belly copula sub-assembly
turned out to be beyond my skills.

Waiting for first coat of clear varnish.

Revell Junkers Ju 88A4 - Part IV

Ush, a month since last update... Time surely moves past when one's busy. Luckily, I found an hour here and there for this project and things are moving steadily along. At this moment, I'm pretty much done with the paint job of the fuselage - a pretty standard job with usual challenges in masking department. The airplane is painted in standard Luftwaffe splinter pattern for bombers - Lifecolor UA503 (RLM65) was used for the lower surfaces, while the upper surfaces are painted with UA502 (RLM74) and UA501 (RLM70).

Dragon Sherman M4A1(76)W VVSS

Next tank project after Königstiger - another Dragon kit, this time around a Sherman 76. For now, only a quick overview of components - impressive in their own right.

Revell Junkers Ju 88A4 - Part III

I've managed to make substantial progress on the kit over last weekend. The main assembly is now finished and the kit is primed and ready for preshading. There isn't all that much to talk about at this stage, as all sub-assemblies went together pretty much perfectly, with only minor amount of filler required for wing root areas and fuselage joints.

However, as I suspected, the lower part of the cockpit (clear part J-C100) keeps causing me problems. The fit is better than I suspected, but the joints are under constant pressure due to the fact that side panels need to be slightly squeezed into right position. Initially I tried to glue everything together with Glue 'n' Glaze from Deluxe Materials, a white glue especially for cockpits and clear parts. It seems however that it doesn't handle outward tension very well and one of side joints failed after 48 hours. In pure desperation, I hit it with cyano-acrylate with risk of crazying the visible clear areas of the component; we'll see what the end result will look like once I scrape away the masking.

It must be said that if one overlooks the problems with over-engineered cockpit and fuselage, this is really delightful kit to work with. The quality of detail continues to be unsurpassed and I am immensely impressed by the value one gets for the relatively modest price asked by Revell for this kit.

Revell Junkers Ju 88A4 - Part II

Work on cockpit area of the Junkers continues and one issue becomes apparent as I progress. In my opinion at least. this kit is ridiculously over-engineered in almost comical German fashion. The fuselage assembly around cockpit area consists of two parts that look like two letters L, bottom parts of which are supposed to fit together. Backend of this section is then supposed to fit into the rest of the fuselage - no problem there. The nose is then constructed out of several bits and pieces that go on top and bottom, some of them made out of clear plastic and it is crucial that everything fits together with very small tolerances, otherwise you're looking forward to rather advanced filing and filling session. This task proved in my case beyond my skills and I will now have to figure out how to mask a very visible gap between the fuselage and belly section of cockpit gondola.

This being said, I am still in awe of the detail of this kit straight out of the box.

My Badger is dead, long live Badger

Final post of the day and a sad announcement - my trusty Badger 150 died couple of days ago. Or, if I am to be perfectly honest, I probably 'killed' it myself with my slightly obsessive insistence to keep it very clean. Although I won't swear that this is actually what happened, I probably busted the needle bearing by ramming in the cleaning brush all the way through the length of the airbrush. This action (done repeatedly on several occasions) most probably dislodged or damaged the needle bearing, a small teflon packing ring, presence of which I was happily unaware of. As it turns out, it has a couple of rather important tasks, all of them vital for the airbrush staying in serviceable order.

The first indications of the problem occurred quite a while ago, when I found that paint has spread along the whole length of the needle. This is apparently not supposed to happen, as the needle bearing is supposed to keep the paint from 'wandering' back into the airbrush. So, if you find that your needle is covered in paint, you have a problem.

Happily unawares of the budding problem, I continued to use the airbrush without any noticeable problems until last week when I worked on the interior of the Junkers. The airbrush acted 'funny', but I accounted it to my difficulty with mixing the paint of proper consistency. Once done, I cleaned the airbrush in my usual manner... yes, that's right, the cleaning brush was yet again rammed into the airbrush body. Final flush with water served as undeniable evidence of the fact that the Badger had had it - flow of the spray was interrupted by what I can only describe as a 'hickup' before resuming for a second or two... then another 'hickup' and so on...

Having no idea what was going on, I asked Google for help and after a couple of minutes found Don's Airbrush Tips page. Thank you sir for a very valuable source of information about airbrushes, but even more important for your section about troubleshooting of problems with them. On this page, I found a link to this very informative movie, which described the symptoms I was experiencing to a tee and gave me the most probable cause of the problem. Sorry for not embedding the movie in the post, Blogger refuses to find it in its list of Youtube movies. (????)

The brush is now sent to the shop I purchased it from and getting the blown bearing replaced and work on Junkers had come to a grinding halt. Thinking definitely about a backup airbrush; if you have any comments about about the Iwata Neo? :)

Revell Junkers Ju 88A4 - Part I

Back to airplane kits; this time around I felt like really digging in my teeth into something bigger, so next object of my attention is Junkers Ju 88A-4 from Revell.

As it turns out, this kit is not only 'bigger' than your run of the mill fighter. Even the initial inspection of content of the package made it clear that this little puppy is most certainly NOT your average 'finished in one hour' Airfix fighter, but an advanced kit with level of detail and complexity that impressed and intimidated me at the same time. Considering its very reasonable price, you get a lot for the money.

The initial inspection also revealed another fact - one of the tiny bits (twin barrels of one of the machine guns) was broken off and missing. Slightly distressed, I searched Revell's site for contact information and what do you know, I promptly found an email address to be used for those very occasions. I fired off an email describing the problem on Saturday evening, got the response on Monday morning and the missing part arrived in an envelope about a week later. Thank you for excellent customer service, Revell.

So what about the kit itself? Well, the building process is slow, partially due to the fact that until recently it overlapped with final stages of Tiger II experiments, partially because I want to take my time with this model. By now I am done with sub-assemblies of the pilot cockpit and I hope that the picture below gives the justice to the detail level of this kit. Everything except the seat belts is out of the box.

Couple of words about those seat belts. They're from Eduard, prepainted and a major PITA to work with, but in my opinion at least worth every penny and minute spent on them. It's my first attempt at photo-etched parts and I have full understanding for folks who spend a fortune on this stuff. They really do enhance the appearance of a kit!