Hasegawa 1/32 Fw 190D-9 Brown 4

[jkim]

Thanks for the comments! After a longer than intended stay in Hawaii, I'm back home in California. Still have lots of post-trip logistics to deal with but I was able to re-visit the work on Brown 4 and make a bit of progress.

I've decided to paint the tail unit in the standard RLM 76 light blue (Mr Hobby Aqueous and lightened with a bit of white). A few color profiles of Brown 4 show this and I thought it looked interesting. It's also plausible/possible since the tail unit was manufactured and painted separately. The fabric-covered rudder will receive a mottle per other Mimetall-manufactured Doras like Blue 12.



The white upper wing crosses were painted using custom-cut masks.

[jkim]

The horizontal stabilizers have been painted and temporarily mounted. The upper fuselage camo colors need to be sprayed on.


The bottom is further along, paint-wise. The flap openings have been masked off and painted RLM 02 Grey (Mr Hobby Aqueous).

[Stikpusher]

Looking very sharp John. Just curious, but do you know when they got to the point in production where the wing undersides were left in bare metal, as you’ve done here? I really like the look of it, but am curious as to when that started happening to see if I could possibly incorporate it into a future build of mine.

[jkim]

Thank you Carlos! I don't really know when this practice started and how uniform the application was. The D-9 was manufactured at a number of different factories (Mimetall, Cottbus, Fiesler, FW, etc) and the underwing treatments were not consistent from factory to factory. Knowing the Werk Number of the particular aircraft will identify factory of origin and help to identify possible/probable bottom pattern. My build is based on JaPo's identification of the W2 bottom scheme for Mimetall aircraft and whatever I could discern in the photos of Brown 4 (Werk Number 500547).

[Stikpusher]

Thanks John. When I get to that point, I’ll hit you up about the undersides. I do like the W2A scheme.

[jkim]

Finally got around to spraying the upper fuselage colors. This will primarily be Dark Brown RLM81 (AK Real Color Version 1 lightened with a bit of Off-White).


The tail was lightly misted with the RLM81 color and the rudder was mottled using a combination of RLM76 over RLM81.

[BlackSheep214]

I can’t comment any more than what I’ve been stating Allie time. Too busy trying to pick my jaw off the floor seeing your build progresses from beginning to end.

[tempestjohnny]

I can only dream of this kind of skill

[jkim]

Thanks guys!

Painting continues with the tail markings. The Werk Number and swastika was scanned from the Eagle Editions decal sheet and traced using AutoCAD. This allowed me to cut paint masks using the Silhouette Portrait cutter. The black fuselage cross was added at this stage as well.



The swastika looked too big and when I checked the decal sheet again, I found that I had traced the wrong swastika. So after sanding down the edges of the newly-painted Werk Number and swastika, I covered up the tail with paint again. I've also started adding the Bright Green RLM 82 (AK Real Colors) to the top of the fuselage.


After the corrected swastika and Werk Number were added back to the tail, the masking tape around the black and white tail bands were removed.



I still need to add the Brown "4" and dash but painting is almost finished.

[jkim]

The brown "4" and bar are masked and painted.



With the completion of these markings, the painting is stage is just about complete.



Note that part of the "4" appears to be curved when viewed from behind.