SPA Modeler

Here’s ya a shot of the top seam. HAHA Every other Emil I did the top seam sealed up without much effort, like we all wish our airplanes would. Irony, I know.

This time around though, the seam stayed. Boy of boy was I overjoyed!

Nice! I know what you mean my last 109 the seam filled out so good I hated to rescribe it.

Kenny, If I ask politely, can I please come and play in your office - it sounds bloody awesome!

That Me109 is looking superb!

Floki- Right!!?? That’s just one of the funny tricks that models play on us to keep us on our toes I suppose.

Stuart- Any time my man! Any time!!

Stuart wrote:Kenny, If I ask politely, can I please come and play in your office - it sounds bloody awesome!

That Me109 is looking superb!

LOL!

Alright fellas! Pips’ Emil got the cowling painted, and the RLM 76 has been applied top and bottom as well. Have a butcher’s:

It’s official! We have ourselves a “yellow bastard”:


Under hard light from the window and laptop monitor:


A nice side view:



A few things:

1. The paint scheme for this particular aircraft has been debated a lot. Of the extant photos, I’ve only found one which was in color and the nose isn’t visible:



I do have this one, and the nose is visible....:



...but fellas, I’ll be dang’d if I can tell whether the yellow on the cowling goes all the way back to the windscreen or not. The opacity of the paint up there all looks the same to me, and I’m operating under the assumption that this aircraft wore an early splinter camo scheme at the beginning (more on that later), and it definitely doesn’t look dark green up there... But at the end of the day, I ended up picking the yellow all the way back to the windscreen because boy oh boy does it look mean!

As to the camo. That’s debated too. And everybody has their own interpretations. There’s a lot of great ones out there that folks have done, definitely worth a google. I’m going to do the early RLM 70/71 splinter scheme as the foundation, and then overspray with the RLM 02 on the wings, and 70-71 mottling on the fuselage. I’m still working out *how* I want to do the wings. I know what you’re saying- “Just spray the splinter camo and then overspray the RLM 02.” And I’ve thought about doing just that! The problem is- I hate the idea of doing that. Here’s why:

1. That will necessitate A LOT of paint, many many layers.

2. That will mean a lot of wasted paint, as much of the RLM 70/71 won’t be visible.

3. I like modulation in tones, and I prefer to get that from starting with black primer and then building up shades of the main color. I can’t do that with the RLM 02 if I’m painting over 70/71. It’ll end up looking flat.

4. Aesthetically I dislike how a lot of schemes like this end up looking on models. Something in my head cries “it’s over-scale!” It just doesn’t look right to me in a lot of cases. Perhaps that’s my OCD telling me, “Hey! They’re ruining a perfectly good splinter camo job”, I dunno. I DO know that I’m being unreasonable here.

Anyhow, so while I wish to have some of the old scheme peeking through, I am disinclined to do a full splinter scheme and then overspray it like common sense would dictate. I do have a plan which I think will work and I’ll document it here. It’ll either a great success, or a spectacular failure! We’ll see. We start tomorrow.

The yellow looks great Kenny!

It looks good Kenny. Instead of doing a full splinter scheme maybe a free hand dusting of the splinter scheme. Then follow that up with your 02 and just don't use one shade of 02 spray a bit straight then lighten it up a bit hit some random other areas then darken the base 02 up and hit other areas. It might give you the look your going after of course I would also test that idea on a scrap kit first.

Floki, my idea was similar to the one you recommended. I tried it today on the Emil, and boy oh boy did I screw the proverbial “pooch”!

HOWEVER-

I didn’t smash the model. I didn’t reach for my Kamagong and smash it to smithereens. NO. Instead, I very carefully removed the crappy paintwork with a Q-Tip dipped in Ammonia. It took me an hour. But I did it. Worked like a charm and none of the existing good paint was damaged in the process.

I’ve decided I’m going to do the full splinter camo, and overspray it. Carefully. I’ll get started on this in the next few days.

Looks great! I haven't done a German airplane since 1984 or so lol. Whoops - can't say that now, just finished that Bf-108 I have a 190 and a 109 in the stash - following along.