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thomasweir

Mr XN923's build or builds will be posted here

XN923 · Bronze Star Joined: 16 May 2008 Posts: 1148

I have a bagged A/F-8 on its way from eBay and have a Dora-9 at home. I fancy building a Sturmbock - heavily armed and armoured A-8 for the uninitiated which was tailored to attacking bomber formations. Differences to the stock A-8 include 30mm cannon in the outer bays, external armour plate around the cockpit, an armoured cowling ring and armoured glass on the quarter-panels. I have the 1/48 scale Eduard 'Royal Class' Sturmbock but don't dare tackle it, so this will allow me to do a prototype build and get over myself.

Dora-9, not sure yet but I fancy one of those late war aircraft cobbled together from sub assemblies in different colour schemes.

thomasweir · Posted: Wed 03 Jun 2009 12:48 pm Post subject:

Looking forward to your build

XN923 · Bronze Star Joined: 16 May 2008 Posts: 1148

Made a start today, will post photos tomorrow

I'll be building the A8/R8 'Rammjaeger' White 11 of 5/JG4 using decals from the Sky Models sheet 72-059 and D-9 Blue 12 of II.JG6 using decals from Eagle Cals sheet EC#60. Both late war machines with interesting colour schemes. The Dora in particular is a real patchwork.

XN923 · Bronze Star Joined: 16 May 2008 Posts: 1148

A start:

Some matt black on the interior of the A-8, dry brushed silver. This is the extent of the work on the interior as the focus is all going to be on the colour scheme

Some other bits pre-painted

The one in the middle is the scheme I'm going for:

Similar job with the D-9

And here's the Eagle Cals sheet - I'll be building Blue 12, the third from top

thomasweir · Posted: Tue 30 Jun 2009 18:11 pm Post subject:

Looking good

chrisbh · Posted: Wed 01 Jul 2009 09:12 am Post subject:

Those Doras do look good don't they?
Aye
Chris
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XN923 · Bronze Star Joined: 16 May 2008 Posts: 1148

Main assembly complete on the Dora

And a coat of primer

And here's the Sturmbock mainly built and with cockpit external armour panels added. These have raised rivets but it's hard to see with the flash photography

TimJ · Posted: Wed 01 Jul 2009 22:07 pm Post subject:

Nice work so far.
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So many kits, so little time

thomasweir · Posted: Thu 02 Jul 2009 07:19 am Post subject:

Looking good

XN923 · Bronze Star Joined: 16 May 2008 Posts: 1148

Both models have now been primed, and the A-8 has a coat of Xtracolour RLM 76 Lichtblau. The main base colour of the Dora-9 will be that late-war Sky-like colour which I'm not too sure of the exact shade of, but was going to try a slightly darkened Hu90.

Going to Paris tomorrow so probably no more updates for a week - will try and get some photos up tonight.

chrisbh · Posted: Fri 03 Jul 2009 13:33 pm Post subject:

Looking forward to seeing the pics, especially the A-8 in its RLM 76.
Aye
Chris
_________________
I'm very happy to believe that the excellent can be the enemy of the good enough.

XN923 · Bronze Star Joined: 16 May 2008 Posts: 1148

Paint starting to go on as above

D-9

A-8

TimJ · Posted: Sat 04 Jul 2009 15:50 pm Post subject:

Looking good so far.
_________________
So many kits, so little time

Badwolf · Posted: Sat 04 Jul 2009 21:38 pm Post subject:

They're coming along well.

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"It's life Jim, but not as we know it!" - Dr McCoy
Airfix Club 564448

chrisbh · Posted: Tue 07 Jul 2009 16:46 pm Post subject:

All good stuff. Any idea how heavy the armour plating was and what effect it had on performance? Not critical against big targets I guess.
Aye
Chris
_________________
I'm very happy to believe that the excellent can be the enemy of the good enough.

Brews · Posted: Tue 07 Jul 2009 16:58 pm Post subject:

To compensate for the weight of the armour, which also included armoured glass tacked onto the canopy sides (Falcon do a canopy in one of the Clearvax Luftwaffe sets), the outer wing cannon (and ammunition too, obviously) were removed. Performance was thus little-affected compared to the regular Fw 190. Good shots also removed the outer cannon, providing a definite performance advantage. The weight of fire from an Fw 190 with outer cannon removed would be similar to that of a Spitfire with 2xHispano and 2x0.50"cals OR 4x0.303"cals.
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“The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” Winston Churchill

XN923 · Bronze Star Joined: 16 May 2008 Posts: 1148

Back from Paris now. Anyway, thanks for the info Brews. I believe the outer armour was 5mm, which makes even the thinnest plasticard overscale but you get the general idea. I believe the performance of aircraft with the full R2 and R8 mods was somewhat depleted but with, as Brews said, selected bits taken off things improved. With the original aim of attacking bomber formations, the extra weight of fire of the outer 30mm cannon was necessary, but when squadrons were removed from these duties for operations such as Bodenplatte, it wasn't so crucial. The aircraft I am modelling was captured by American forces with no cockpit glass armour but I am going to add this as I believe it would have been fitted at some stage. The fuselage MGs were possibly removed as well, though this may have been done after capture.

XN923 · Bronze Star Joined: 16 May 2008 Posts: 1148

More paint on the D-9... The upper surface colour of RLM83 Dunkelgrun (dark green) is on, plus the overpainting of Hellgrun (bright green) on the nose. I've also painted the rudder RLM76 as it seems pretty clear to me from the colour photos that this is the case, despite there being no mention in the instructions.

This aircraft was a real mess! There seem to have been around ten or eleven different colours on it.

XN923 · Bronze Star Joined: 16 May 2008 Posts: 1148

RLM 74 and 75 onto the A-8 now, and mottling done on the fuselage sides

And the Dora-9 with natural metal and RLM 74 wing undersides - a bit of paint creep which I will tidy up later

And another example of touching-up on the tail, whoever did this seemed to take the opportunity to add some mottles as well

This is my first attempt at Luftwaffe colour schemes and whilst I'm enjoying the complexity, I can't imagine I'll have the patience to do many of these!