Fiddled around with the G-6 for past few days and have accumulated enough photos to report on it. Hartmann's G-6 has the later tall tail so I've added the appropriate top half of the tail fin. I like how Eduard added detail to the inside surface of the tail fin cut-out in case you want to pose the rudder off neutral.
Every 109 kit that I've ever seen has trouble molding this hatch. Eduard supplies a PE plate to address this shortcoming but I thought I'd scribe a new one.
I filled the existing hatch with CA glue. I only have square hatch templates so I had place the scriber twice to get the appropriate rectangular shape. I use a sewing needle chucked into a pin-vise for scribing hatches.
Here's what the finished hatch looks like after clean-up and a shot of primer. I'm also in the process of cleaning up the fuselage joint and restoring rivets.
I haven't glued the gun cowling on yet. I want to place the gun barrels carefully, so I did it when the cowling is still unattached. I don't want the gun barrels laying on the gun trough but clear of all of the gun trough surfaces. This looks better and will make painting easier.
A quick check to see how the canopy pieces fit after the rear pilot bulkhead is put into place. The Revell instructions do not call for this part but some sources have noted that this machine had the square battery box enclosure. Oops... it looks like one of the seat harnesses has gone missing!
Some of the cleanup work on the fuselage seam. I'm using the RB Rivet-R tool in 0.75mm even though this does not quite match the Eduard rivet spacing.
On to the landing gear... Eduard provides one-piece tiress but separate hubs. I thought I'd take advantage of this and paint the tires and hubs separately. Late 109 wheels can be tricky to paint in that the wheel hubs were commonly black. I like to manufacturer some contrast between the tires and hubs.
I've decided to take a page from my 1/32 bag of tricks and use small sections of brass tubing to help connect the brake lines (which are lead wire) to the landing gear legs.
The landing gear legs were painted Tamiya RLM Grey, which is fairly close to RLM02. I use slightly lightened Grey to highlight some sections of the legs just to increase visual interest. The legs were then given a gloss coat, a dark pastel wash and then a flat coat. The end of the brake line was terminated in the characteristic loop and then painted black.
The tires were painted in a custom mix of Dark Grey, Brown and Black and the wheels were painted black with some grey accents. I wanted to do something different with the tire treads. The easiest is to give the recessed treads a pastel wash that is lighter than the tire itself, like light brown. It highlights the treads but unless your aircraft is in mud, I don't feel that this is a very convincing treatment. I think the recessed tread should be darker than the rubber that is in contact with ground, for most dry situations. After painting the tires that dark grey/brown, I gave the outer rim of the tire a spray of a lighter brown, to help provide contrast for the next step. After sealing the paint with gloss, I gave the treads a black wash. Further wear was imparted to the tires after the flat coat with dry pastels.
