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

Ok, so my mind is moving on to a new build.  I'm still going to finish the Mig-29A (there's so many decals to place on it) but I thought I'd give you a taster for what's next.  Unfortunately (for some), building these kits does not make the collection in my cupboard any smaller.  While there's two being worked on, over the past couple of weeks I acquired another two to replace them.  Well not really replace them...I just saw some other cool aircraft which I wanted.

I do wonder where I would display them if I built them all...there's 32 unbuilt planes hiding in my study cupboard at the moment.  Sure, that's not many when compared to some collectors that I know, but I'm guessing that it's 32 more than most people have.  My wife complains that they're dust traps but what would she know?  I just think they're cool...in the same way that Dr Who made bow ties cool.

Introduction

The Ta-152 is the ultimate variant of the Focke-Wulf FW-190, a fighter that saw action in great numbers during WWII.  The Ta-152 was produced in small numbers over three main variants right at the end of the war.  The Ta-152H was a high altitude interceptor, the Ta-152C was a medium altitude fighter and ground attack aircraft and the Ta-152E was a reconnaissance fighter.  The Ta-152H has the somewhat redundant claim to fame as being one of the fastest piston engined fighters of the war.  While other versions were in the early stages of production the Ta-152H is the only version of this fighter to have seen action.

I'll be building the Ta-152 C-0, a pre-production aircraft and one of three aircraft of that designation that were built.  I'm doing this build as part of a Special Interest Group (SIG) build on a forum that I belong to.

The Kit

The Hobby Boss 1/48 Ta-152 C-0 kit is a fairly recent release hitting the shelves of hobby shops in 2011.  The main components of the kit are molded in light grey plastic with finely engraved panel lines. 

A nice touch is having separate flaps and ailerons on the wing.

Detail extends to the rear part of the DB603E engine, which will be visible from the opened wheel well.  Interestingly for some reason Hobby Boss chose to mold the exhausts in an upper and lower half.  This might make them easier to hollow out.  I did read in a review of this kit that you could use extra glue and have it squeeze out of the join to replicate the weld seam on the exhausts - maybe?  The radiator is wrong btw.

There are two versions of the cowl.  The one with the larger hump on it is for the C-1 production model which was going to have a DB603LA engine.

I don't like the look of that propeller but having a separate rudder is nice.  The fabric effect is nicely subdued.  The MK108 cannons look nice too.  Unfortunately you won't see much of them as they're buried in the wing behind the main spar.

The clear parts are beautifully clear with very little distortion.

The decals are well done and there's even a bit of photoetched brass for seat belts, aerials and the rear of the cockpit.

There are two marking options in the kit.  One of these is for the pre-production/prototype machine CI+XM, and the other, "Green 13" from JG301 is fictitious.  I'll be using the CI+XM markings.

It is an accepted fact that, with a few of exceptions, the Luftwaffe colours used on late war fighters are notoriously hard to have certainty over.  Even if you know the RLM colours used, matching the shade is still open to interpretation.  That said, I cannot help but think that the colour callouts in the instructions are not quite correct.  Images of the actual aircraft show there is a demarkation of colours on the cowl just behind the radiator flaps and again halfway along gun cover just forward of the cockpit.  The amount of contrast in these colours is not enough to suggest the two late war greens RLM 82 Light Green and RLM 83 Dark Green as shown in the colour callout of the kit.  My references (see further down) suggest that the colours are RLM 75 Grey-Violet and RLM 83 Dark Green and I think they're probably correct.  Interestingly kit does suggest these colours on the upper surfaces of the wings, however a well known image of the aircraft shows that the pattern Hobby Boss have suggested is close, but not quite correct.  Especially on the left wing.  I am also not sure that the unpainted aluminium area on the undersides extends so far back on the fuselage.

So, colours decided, there are a couple of issues with the kit itself which a true Luftwaffe Experten would not miss.

Firstly, the propeller blades are the wrong shape.  They should have more of a paddle shape to them with a characteristic 'kink' on the leading and trailing edges.  Similarly the spinner has a large hole in the tip commonly seen on Fw-190D and Ta-152 prototypes.

Instead the kit part has a much more gentle curve to the profile of the blades and the spinner tapers too much and has a small hole for the cannon barrel.

Secondly, the radiator used on the kit is not correct.  For some reason Hobby Boss have used the radiator arrangement from a Fw-190 D-9 - an aircraft with a different engine.

The real aircraft had a very different radiator arrangement.

So, for a correct Ta-152 C-0 the entire radiator and propeller assembly has to be replaced.  This leads us onto the extras I plan to add to this build.

Aftermarket Extras

In order to correct the propeller and radiator I'm going to use the Quickboost cowl correction and propeller correction.

Looking at the photograph though it appears that the spinner will still need some work or it too will need replacing.  I do have the spinner from the Engines & Things Fw-190 D-11 conversion kit which I may use instead as it looks like it's the right shape.

To add some general improvements to the already good detail on the kit I'll also be using the Eduard detail set and some replacement wheels from True Details.

Reference Material

It's always good to have some reference material on hand when building an aircraft.  I have quite a number of books on Luftwaffe aircraft some of which are pertinent to this build.

Both of these books contain quite a bit on the Ta-152C and, in particular, the specific aircraft I am building.  The book by Thomas Hitchcock is a limited edition that has been signed by Willie Reschke, one of the pilots that flew the Ta-152.  It cost me a packet at the time but I do like it.

The other reference book that will come in handy is Luftwaffe Camouflage and Markings 1933-1945 Vol. II.  This book has two colour charts with colour chips that have been made to exactly the same recipe as the original paints.  They give a very clear idea as to what the actual colours looked like.  Unfortunately my photography is not up to making them look right in the image.

So, that's where we'll leave it at the moment.  I still have a Mig-29A to finish so I won't really get too far into this kit until that one is finished.

Academy 1/48 Mig-29A - Part 10

Back to Part 9.

Completion of Painting

The main phase of painting was completed by masking up to spray the metallic areas.  These are around the gun, the exhausts and the leading edge of the stabilators and tail.

The area around the gun was sprayed aluminium using Mr Metal Color as were the leading edges of the tail and stabilators.  This paint is great as once it is dry you can buff it to a shine which makes it look more metallic.  The exhaust area got a similar treatment using Mr Metal Color Stainless Steel on top and Iron underneath.  All the metallic areas were then polished and the underside exhaust area was given a light dusting of transparent blue to simulate the heat bloom on the metal.  All areas were then unmasked.

The entire model was then given a gloss coat to seal everything in.

Gloss helps the decals adhere and hides the carrier film so that the decals will look like they're painted on - I hope :-)

Decaling Commences

Once the gloss varnish was dry I started putting on the decals beginning with the aircraft number and unit markings.

Those of you that are observant might notice that I have put the wrong number 77 on the plane.  I did fix this later.

The Aztec decals were not too good in my opinion.  They seemed to separate from the backing paper far too easily as if there was not much adhesive - one floated into the water it was soaking in within seconds of being submerged, a couple of them showed signs of silvering as they were drying and one did not even stick after it had dried requiring care with the setting solutions.  I was able to address all of these shenanigans this with micro sol, or at least I hope I have addressed it.

I have also started the stencil decals.  I'll take my time with these so that I don't inadvertently put my finger on a decal that's soaked in softener.  So for the next few days I'll be working on the missiles and other details during the evening and doing the decals at night.

On to part 11.

Academy 1/48 Mig-29A - Part 9

Back to part 8

Pre-shading

Once the primer was thoroughly dry the model was pre-shaded in black.

Some of you reading this might wonder why this is done. When the camouflage colours are painted the pre-shading will show through faintly.  It gives the impression of dirt and oil getting stuck in panel lines etc.  If you have a look at the real aircraft you'll see what I mean.

When the camouflage goes on there will be some other things I will do to make it look as if the aircraft has been used.

Paint Matching

For this aircraft I found getting the paint colours right really difficult.  The federal standard colour callouts are for FS36375, FS36495 and FS36492.  If your monitor is calibrated correctly then they can be seen on colorserver.net by following this link.  I have tried just about every shade of grey I have in my paints and I could not get anything which satisfied me completely.

The colour suggestions on paint4models.com were no real help.  I do have an app on my iPhone called iModelKit which allows me to mix paints electronically.  This suggests the following mix of paints that I have to get to these FS colours using Vallejo Model Air:

FS36375: 11 parts 71.050, 3 parts 71.090 and 4 parts 71.001
FS36492: 1 part 71.044, 20 parts 71.001 and 8 parts 71.057
FS36495: 12 parts 71.051, 17 parts 71.001 and 3 parts 71.057

These are not even close!  Using the info button the app did say that they rely on the samples from manufacturers websites "so the reference might not be complete or exact."  All I seem to have done is wasted paint.

After all that messing around, using my eyes, my judgement and the reference photos, I guessed the following colours were close.

Even though the light in the photo is lousy the 71.046 is still looks too dark and I am not sure about the XF-66.  I admit it could be the white background of the card making the light grey look darker.

So it's settled then?  Well it was until I found this link which suggested that the light grey was close to XF-80 (allowing for scale fade) and the dark gray was a close visual match to XF-54.  So I sprayed up a sample to test it.  I have to admit it looks good but what an effort!!

Now that I had the colours I was going to use painting commenced with the lightest first.  Coverage was not so heavy that the pre-shading was hidden giving a grimy look to the panels.

Then the darker colours were sprayed freehand.

Once the basecoat of each colour was laid down I mixed a little more of that colour with some white added.  This was sprayed into the centres of panels in a random manner.  This has the effect of breaking up large areas of a single colour and making the paint look weathered.

One More Thing...

My stencil decals finally arrived.  These will help make the model look a bit more realistic as the Aztec Decals were a bit light on for stenciling.  This will particularly help with the missile pylons, some of which I had no decals for.

On to part 10.

Academy 1/48 Mig-29A - Part 8

Back to part 7

Russian Engineering

Russian engineering can sometimes be amusing.  Underneath the Mig-29 there is an exhaust for the auxiliary power unit (APU).  However when the centre-line drop tank is being carried it interferes with this exhaust.  The Russian solution - make the APU vent through the drop tank.

On the Academy kit the APU vent is represented as a raised circular area on the bottom of the drop tank.  This needed to be drilled out to a diameter of 7mm, a rather tricky task requiring a sequence of successively larger drills.  I didn't have a 7mm drill but I did have a 6.5mm drill so I got the hole up to that size and used some wet and dry sandpaper wrapped around a suitably sized piece of dowel to get the hole to the required 7mm.

The next challenge was to roll a photoetched insert into a tube to fit into the hole.  I started with this...

...and using my Small Shop photoetch rolling kit I managed to get it to this.

I was then finally able to insert it into the hole created in the drop tank.  This did not go as smoothly as I would have liked as on two separate occasions I managed to push the piece in so far that it fell in and was rattling around inside the drop tank.  It was quite difficult to get it out again but I persisted and eventually got it into place.

Time to Prime

I decided that the I would put the ailerons back at this stage.  They were slightly offset to give a bit of life to the model.  Once the cement was set I masked the wheel wells and gave the model a clean using a paper towel soaked in isopropyl alcohol.

I sprayed a light primer coat using Vallejo Grey Polyurethane Surface Primer.  It's the first time I have used this product and I have to say I was impressed.  I'll have to get a larger bottle as I will definitely be using this product again.

I had a cursory look over the model to see if there are any areas that need further attention but none jumped out.  I'll have a more careful look before I start to spray the camo.  I am happy with how it's looking so far.

While the primer is curing fully I started on the undercarriage.  The gear legs are from Scale Aircraft Conversions.  These are detailed with some of the Aires resin and Eduard photoetch.

That's all for now.  Next time I will start on the camo and maybe get the main gear done.

On to part 9.

Academy 1/48 Mig-29A - Part 7

Back to part 6

Hold the Front Page - We have a Scoop

There's a little air scoop on top of the fuselage.  The representation of it in the kit is pretty average - it's just a solid lump of plastic.  An air scoop should be able to...well...scoop - and this one was not even hollow!  I decided that it needed improving so I cut off the front portion and then rebuilt it out of plasticard to make it hollow.

The updated version looks much better.  It still needs a bit more cleaning up but at least now it looks like it could actually scoop some air.

And here it is finally fitted to the fuselage.

Feeling Etchy

Some of the exterior photoetched parts were attached.  There are some that are very small indeed and others that need to be curved to fit properly.

Painting Starts

As I had two of the Eduard masking set, the canopy was masked both inside and outside.  Here it is with the inside masked.

The interior colour was sprayed inside and out before attaching it temporarily to the airframe prior to painting the interior colour over the forward canopy.

The rubber surround on the main canopy of the Mig-29 is a very vibrant pink colour as can be seen on the Hungarian example below.

To simulate this I sprayed exterior of the main canopy pink around the edges being careful not to get any of this paint on the inside.  The exterior mask was then removed.  A slightly larger mask put in place for the rest of the painting once this paint is thoroughly dried.  Lovely colour isn't it?

Next time I'll mask the wheel wells and start the painting in earnest.

I have also just ordered some stencil decals as neither the kit nor the decal sheet I am using have all of the myriad of stencils applied to this aircraft.  Let's hope they arrive before I get to the stage where I'm going to need them.

On to Part 8.