The Plane
I built this plane purely because
I wanted to build a plane with Hartmann’s signature all over it, but couldn’t
decide which of his 109’s to build. The hypothetical aircraft with small
snipits of info on it is a Bf-109G-10 from I Gruppe JG52 flown as the
Gruppenkommandeur April 1945. There isn’t a whole lot of proof that he even
flew this plane with this WrkNr, and even worse, he might not have flown a G-10
with the cowl bulges on it to make room for the new DB 605D powerplant. There is
a single picture showing him by the cockpit showing a smoothened out refined
cowling.
The Model
I built the kit right out of the
box, with the exception of a small piece of craft wire for the fuel line inside
the cockpit and after market decals from Aeromaster.
I used sheet # PAF 48-04.
I used Model Master Acrylics and
painted the kit using shades of Panzer Red-Brown as RLM 81 (MM RLM 81 looked too
green for me) and RLM 82 for the upper surfaces/mottle and RLM 84 for the lower
fuselage and under surfaces. I say the word shades because I mixed a ¼ portion
of flat white with the base colors.
I used shapes of stiff bonded
paper for the camouflage and a template with cut out holes in different shapes
for the mottle. I used RLM 04 for the fuselage band, under the cowl and
underside of the wing tips. I had to strip the paint scheme twice before I got
it the way I wanted it. I should have followed the paint up with a coat of
gloss, but thought that the semi-gloss MM paint would be enough to apply the
decals. Boy was I wrong. All the stencils showed silvering which would probably
wreck any chances of this model competing in a show. After the decals, I applied
a coat of clear flat, which toned down the aircraft from looking new, but it
still wasn’t quite where I wanted it. After 24 hours of drying time, I looked
to find a way to fade the paint. After asking many a question of my modeling
buddies, I took a very, very thinned paint cup of flat white and carefully
misted this on with my airbrush at a low airflow pressure as possible. This
seemed to work.
I am not great at weathering, so
I left that alone, but did use a wash of burnt umber oil paint to all panel
lines, wheel wells, doors and struts. I also used pastels for the exhaust and
the underside of the cowling.
(click on
the image below to load the full size photo)
This was only my third attempt at
modeling with an airbrush and as you can see, anyone can do it. I really enjoyed
the build of this model, as frustrating as it was at times. I wish to thank
Steve Bamford who took the awesome pictures. Steve.....you are da man..!
Brad
Editors note: You're quite
welcome Brad!!! SB
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