Saturday 12 July 2014

1/48 Hobby Boss Ta 152 C-0 - Part 4

Back to part 3

Hello again.  It's been a long time since I last updated this but my build of this aircraft continues with some work on the propeller and spinner.  I also get the wings on.

You Spin Me Right Round

I mentioned right at the beginning that I didn't think that the spinner or prop blades were right in this kit.  The aircraft I am building had a spinner design seen on the Ta152 H prototypes and on some Fw190 D prototypes.  You can see in the photo below that a defining feature of this spinner is the large hole in the end.

This feature is missing from the kit spinner.

In an attempt to rectify this I bought the Quickboost spinner and propeller replacements.  It was not much better than the kit so I needed to source a more correct spinner.  I think I got close with the Engines and Things conversion set for the Fw 190 D-11.  The three choices are shown in the image below.  On the left is the Engines and Thing spinner, in the middle is the kit spinner and on the right is the Quickboost spinner.  You can see they're all quite different.

I resolved to start with the Engines and Things spinner and modify it to match my references.  Frankly its a pretty awful casting so there will be a fair bit of work to get it to the state that I want.

Similarly the propeller blades are the wrong shape.  The actual aircraft has large paddle shaped props as shown below.

None of the alternatives I had to hand were quite right.  In the picture below from left to right we have the Engines and Things prop, the kit prop, the Quickboost prop and some I had in my spares box from the Dragon Ta 152H.  They are all different shapes but the closest is the one from the Dragon kit.

I opted to use the Dragon one as a basis for making my own.  First I got measurements of the correct length from some plans I have in one of my references.  This showed the Dragon blade to be too short by about 1mm.  The trailing edge of the Dragon blade is also wrong where it begins to flare out.  I traced the Dragon blade on paper using a pencil and made corrections to the drawing using a fine marker.  I then used the corrected drawing as a template to correct the shape.  I started by cutting the trailing edge off the Dragon blade and attached plasticard using plenty of super glue.

This was then shaped to match the drawing and the trailing edges thinned down.  Here you can see the almost completed blade next to the original Dragon version.

It's taller, more pointed and slightly wider.  Once finished it will be cast in resin to make exact duplicates.

With the propeller blade completed I finished up the main assembly by gluing the wings on.

The wing and tailplane joints were pretty good.  A little more assembly and we're almost ready for paint.

In the next update we'll get some paint. and decals on.

On to part 5.