The Kit
The
kit was simple and fairly detailed. The kit supplied decals for 2
aircraft. In this kit I decided to modify the cowling to display the
cowling guns.
History
The
FW 190 D-9 had a longer nose than the “A” series to house the 1776 hp Jumo
213 A-1 which gave the D-9 a top speed of 685 km/h. The D-9 carried an
armament of 2 wing root 20mm MGs 151/20 cannons and 2 cowling mounted 13mm MGs
131 and an optional bomb under the fuselage. The D-9 was developed to
counter the P-51 mustang and the Spitfire Mk IX. It succeeded in some
areas but didn’t win the war for the Nazis.
Instructions
The
instructions was just a folded A4 page. The painting guide was on the back
of the box.
Construction of the
Kit
As
always you start of with the cockpit. The cockpit and interior was RLM
gray and painted the cushioning on the seat brown and white seat belts.
The instrument panel was painted black and the dials were painted white and any
other details white or black. Then the fuselage halves were glued and the also
the wings. Once both had dried I glued them together. Then came the
sanding. No putty was used on the fuselage and the wings but little was still
used were the wings joined the fuselage. Then the horizontal stabilizers
were attached. Now came the modification. In some kits that make up to be a FW
190 sometimes have the cowling guns as a separate piece. So, from an
idea I got from Scale Aviation Modeller, I cut the piece in the appropriate spot
and stuck on the forward part of the cowling and used plastic card and placed
over the gap and sprayed it RLM gray as well as the underside of the gun
covering. Then used the guns from the Revell-Monogram Mustang I’m also
making at the moment and used them for the MGs 131.There was 2 problems with
guns. One was that they were too long to fit in the space given and they
didn’t touch the top of the cowling. So I cut a little section out of
the middle of both guns then stuck them back together to solve the long ness and
stuck them on a thin layer of spruce and lined them up accordingly. Once
everything was sanded and to my satisfaction, I was now ready to paint.
The underside was painted in a light blue giving it 2 coats (yes I know it’s
wrong but that’s what it said). Then I did the camouflage on the wings
which consisted of RLM gray and German gray giving it 2 coats, and then the
topside of the fuselage using blu-tac to separate the 2 colours giving it
unfortunately an unsoft edge. The wheel doors were also painted accordingly to
the side. The spinner, props and wheels were painted flat black. The
engine was also painted black then dry brushed silver. The many body was
given 2 coats of magic shine and then the decals applied then another coat of
magic shine then a coat of Testors dull coat. Now the engine was attached
and the undercarriage aligned and set. I then took this opportunity to
mask and paint the canopy. Then after the undercarriage had set and the canopy
dried I attached the the gun covering and canopy with white glue. Then dry
brushed some gun streaks and cracked
paint. The final thing was to paint the exhausts brown-gray colour.
Accuracy
I
think the undercarriage is a bit short otherwise it’s fine from where I’m
standing.
Colour Options
There
were 2 colour options, an early D-9 and a late war D-9 with a straight hood.
Decals
The
decals were superb. They went on very easily and set nicely and came out
better than I expected. I used micro sol as my decal agent.
Rating : 10/10
Conclusion and
Recommendation
I
thought this was a rather easy kit to make and comes out very well. Even
for an amateur it looks good. I don’t know if this kit is still in
production, but I got it for:
$10(AUS)
I
would recommend this kit to any modeller. Happy Modelling.
Andrew
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