Ian M's Ju-87D-5 Italeri 1/48

[Ian M]

The wings are on and suddenly its an aircraft!
[ATTACH]278058[/ATTACH]
The join at the wing root is OK, a bit of a step but correcting it will cause more damage than it is worth. I can live with it.
The engine is built but as I am not going to show it, its not getting painted. It just there to hold the propeller and the cowlings.
I often wonder why the makers dont provide a way to build the aircraft so you can still build the air frame and have the motor displayed by the side if that's what you want to do. A kind of dummy motor block if you like. what ever.
The UC struts are done and ready for a swipe with a sanding stick. As I always brush paint tyres, I cant see it being an issue.
Tail fins! If you are doing the Italeri kit. Pay attention. The two PE parts that go at the end of the tail wings. put the one on the wing first, then the one on the elevator.
[ATTACH]278059[/ATTACH]
I had a bit of bother with the join on the bottom of the cowl. Nice big lump of filler should sort that out. If I lined up the top the bottom was out and vise-versa. So I went for the yukky bit on the bottom! (Don't even think about it!)
[ATTACH]278060[/ATTACH]
As the sun is now belting through the window and I am both roasted and blind, time to go play in the garden, or the work shop.

[john i am]

Looking good your a brave man doing that camo.

[Robert1968]

Hi Ian
On my Airfix version it's the same with the engine you either display with cowling off or no engine and cowling on . I'm doing the latter as I'm doing mine bombing up fir a mission
Wings and tail stabilisers on and the Airfix has two options fir the rear either down or straight
I've done mine as straight
My wheels are painted rubber black and I A/b but I still need to detail up. Pics up later

Regards

Robert

[yak face]

Nice work Ian , it looks a lovely kit , dont envy you with the camo though , it literally looks like a can of worms! cheers tony

[papa 695]

Just caught up Ian, and some nice work pal, looking forward to the painting though. ( in a slightly sadistic way )

[Ian M]

Talking of sadistic. The Canopies! Are you nuts.
Frame lines, what there is of them are thinner than the masking tape and rather that a propper raised frame, they are just frosted mat. One side was a tiny bit better that the other but that's not saying much.
Here is two hours worth of sodding about with tape, scalpels and way to much coffee and tobacco!
[ATTACH]278122[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]278123[/ATTACH]
Like on a Mossie, half the frames are only on the inside. It ain't going to happen. As it is I almost cocked up. I was just about to glue the rear machine guns in when I thought it might be better to paint them first! lol. To late for the frame in the canopy behind the pilot though. That buggers glue good and propper.
Once I get these sorted, I can nail them in place and start throwing some primer at the thing.

[papa 695]

Very nice work on them Though Ian. Now I think one of Colin's Spitfires wont go amiss.

[peterairfix]

Yep nice work but I have cheated and ordered a masking set for my canopy's

[colin m]

All looking very nice Ian. I think I would have 'bottled' the canopy and bought a mask set. So well done you.

[Ian M]

We will see how well it's gone when the mask comes off.
Right now the primer is hardening off.
I used the Stynylrez and am basically happy, the black and grey go down great, the white one though seemed a bit splattery. Still dried flat and smooth so just a bit spotty.
I'll put a photo or two tomorrow.

[Robert1968]

Talking of sadistic. The Canopies! Are you nuts.
Frame lines, what there is of them are thinner than the masking tape and rather that a propper raised frame, they are just frosted mat. One side was a tiny bit better that the other but that's not saying much.
Here is two hours worth of sodding about with tape, scalpels and way to much coffee and tobacco!
[ATTACH]278122[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]278123[/ATTACH]
Like on a Mossie, half the frames are only on the inside. It ain't going to happen. As it is I almost cocked up. I was just about to glue the rear machine guns in when I thought it might be better to paint them first! lol. To late for the frame in the canopy behind the pilot though. That buggers glue good and propper.
Once I get these sorted, I can nail them in place and start throwing some primer at the thing.

Ouch with the masking!!! of the greenhouse but that looks a brill job done there.
Hope I don't come into bother within the Airfix offering
Lovely progress

Regards

Robert

[Ian M]

As promised a couple of photos of the pre-shade.
Here's the top side; The rather fickle white atop the very easy black. Even though the white was a bit of a challenge the finish is just as good.
[ATTACH]278215[/ATTACH]

The bottom done in Black atop Grey. Went down well and only wobbly due to a bad case of the shakes!
[ATTACH]278216[/ATTACH]
Why the different colour's? well the top I went for a high contrast due to the dark camouflage colour's and the bottom in the low contrast due to the paler colour.

While I had the airbrush fired up I took a swing at a bit of card to try that spagetti camo. Shall we just say it was a challenge? I ended up with either a to thick a line that had enough colour to cover, or a nice thin line that was so thin a coat of paint it would take several coats to cover the camouflage colour below! That ain't going to happen! I even got to the point where the pulse in my hand was affecting the spray pattern.
I will have another go later, maybe with enamels to se if that helps. I doubt it but who knows.

laters.

[papa 695]

Nice work on the pre-shade Ian.

[Ian M]

So to try preserve the pre-shading a bit, I thought that I would mask up for both the colour's. So I started to mask off the areas for the darker of the two. That done I dug up some Xtracrylix RLM 70 and 71 as per the destructions. Now I am no expert on German aircraft colours and I knew that the two are close to each other. I was none the less shocked to see that they are almost the same colour. I even had to take them right to the window befor I could see the difference!
Why didn't they just paint them overall in one of them!? I found myself muttering as I thinned down the paint.
So I sprayed the 'lighter' of the two, cleaned the airbrush, (Xtracrylix dry rather fast in the brush), then peeled off the first masking.
I was rather miffed to find that the PE armour panel by the pilots position did not hold onto the Stynylrez primer as well as the tape did !
So that will need priming again befor moving on to the next colour.
Here are a couple of snapshots after the tape came off.
[ATTACH]278242[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]278243[/ATTACH]
There was a tiny speck of dust in the paint on the port wing, but I recon that the clearcoat and markings will take care of that.
And the pre-shade still shows through. Yeah.
I recon Monday it should be safe to put tape over the paint again and do the next colour.... Then the bottom gets a blast of blue.

[yak face]

Beautifully precise work Ian (you should see my attempts at pre shading , theyre wonky as hell!!) Youre right about the similarity in shade of the RLM 70/71 scheme , remember the old Airfix 1/24 Stuka , they must have been looking at black and white photos for their research and originally gave the paint scheme as all over green. A lot of these old pics show very little ,if any , distinction between the two colours. Its a similar thing today with a lot of modern grey aircraft that look uniform in colour but are actually slightly different shades - dont these Air Forces consider us poor modellers!!??