1/72 IBG Fw 190D-9 Early Production

[mostrich]

Have a safe trip and enjoy your time in Asia, John!

[Stuart]

Are you sure that's not 1/32!

Have a safe trip John!

[jkim]

Hello friends! John here and I've been back in the US for about three weeks now. I'm still in the process of adjusting back to normal life. Not so much the time difference but the shift in emotions and feelings. I think I leave a piece of my heart every time I visit Central Asia. Took a lot of pics, although the total count (2500 was significantly less than previous years), spent a couple of weeks processing the photos and posting 700 or so them to Facebook in 17 separate albums, as well as creating a video slideshow to show at my church.






On an aviation note, Kyrgyzstan, being a former state of the Soviet Union, has lots of Russian aircraft, both new and old. I saw Mil helicopters at the airport and this display of a MiG-23 at the entrance to the town of Tokmok...


I didn't want to post again until I had worked up enough initiative to resume this D-9 build. So... to facilitate quick completion, I made the executive decision to glue the canopy shut so I don't have to futz with the slack antenna cable.



In preparation of the painting to come, I've plugged up the landing gear wells with tissue paper. When wet with water, the paper is easily shaped and conformed to the wheel well.


I am anticipating using my Badger SOTAR for some of the camo painting because it has a smaller needle than my workhorse Iwata HP-C Plus. I used the Badger to spray the panel lines black as my first preshade layer.



I reverted back to the Iwata to apply the second preshade layer, which is a random mottle accomplished by shooting black through a scrap piece of scrubbing pad. The preshading is intended to create some depth and irregularity upon the camo finish. This has worked fairly well on my 1/32 and 1/48 builds but obviously the first time I am employing it on an aircraft in this small scale. The good thing is that I can dial the effect from very obvious all the way down to zero, depending on how it looks to me.




That's all for now!

[Floki]

Good to see you back and glad you had a good time on vacation. Painting is off to a great start.

[Duke Maddog]

Beautiful pics man! I love the scenes from another part of the world.

I'm also interested in seeing how that preshade system you have works on 1/72 scale aircraft as well. If it works well, I might even try it on some of my future builds.

[Stuart]

Fantastic pictures John - it looks like you had a great time. Was it just a vacation or were you actually doing some work out there?

Loving the pre-shading, I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

[jkim]

Good to see you back and glad you had a good time on vacation. Painting is off to a great start.

Thanks Clint! Good to be back but it took a few weeks of post-trip decompression to get back to normal!

Beautiful pics man! I love the scenes from another part of the world.

I'm also interested in seeing how that preshade system you have works on 1/72 scale aircraft as well. If it works well, I might even try it on some of my future builds.

Thanks Duke! Kyrgyzstan is a very interesting place. I've been there a number of times so it is now familiar to me. Former Soviet Union but pretty westernized now.

Fantastic pictures John - it looks like you had a great time. Was it just a vacation or were you actually doing some work out there?

Loving the pre-shading, I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

Thank you Stuart! This was a church-related trip. My church in San Diego has connections with local churches in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Every year, we partner with them to hold a conference for medical students (primarily from India and Pakistan) who are studying in Bishkek. This year, I went with a team of nine from my church and two from San Jose as well as two people from India I've been going there the longest so I did most of the planning and coordination. And I am the unofficial photographer. Not exactly work but not purely vacation either.

Painting updates coming soon!

[Duke Maddog]

Sweet! Great information and I'm glad your church is so proactive too. That really must be awesome being able to do that.

[BlackSheep214]

Welcome back!

[jkim]

Thanks guys!

With the preshading done, camo painting can begin. The overall lower wing and fuselage color is the late war variation of RLM76. As mentioned earlier, Mr Hobby Aqueous Duck Egg Green seems to be a decent match for this shade. I've lightened this color with white, thinned to an approximate 2:1 thinner to paint ratio and started filling in this color gradually, panel by panel.



Because it is highly thinned, you have to keep the airbrush constantly moving to avoid pooling of the paint. Also, the high thinner content tends to seep into the darker preshade layer and bringing some of that to the surface so you have to monitor the sprayed areas for this gradual change.


Slowly, this base coat is established with a hint of the preshading layer visible.



The color is extended to the fuselage sides in the same panel-by-panel sequence.




Once the RLM76 layer is finished, I paint the upper wings and horizontal stabilizers in RLM81 Brown Violet and RLM83 Dark Green. This low-contrast combination is not the sexiest look but it seems to be logically documented in Mr. Crandall's Dora book to be the likely colors.



The demarcation is all freehand with the Badger SOTAR airbrush at low pressure. I don't think I am satisfied with the demarcation that freehand airbrushing provides at this scale. I think it needs to be finer. So I am contemplating the use of lifted masks to provide a harder yet still sprayed demarcation.