S&P/Brent Ju-88G-6

[gomidefilho]

Is a very nice scratchbuilding details, superb build, and a very good exercise how is possible with paper. Top job! Congratulations!

[Siwi]

Thanks for your kind comments and motivation! I got a bit diverted recently by a Mig-29 as I needed an easy OOB build whilst I have some intense weeks in real life, but I will keep steadily adding to this model when I have enough brains available. Still to make are the starboard Jumo engine and mountings, radiator and shaft, the port prop and spinner, pitot tube, control surface actuators and some other antenna and little bumps.

[Rata]

What Pericles said! Lot of extra work here that really adds.

[Siwi]

Into the home stretch.


The portside propellor was built from the kit parts with two extra layers of paper and a little sanding on the edges. The shape is perfect. Spinner was my first time trying a coiling method as opposed to a mountboard sandwich; I'm not sure which technique is any better than the other and the cutouts for the prop blades are too small. Again abandoning historical accuracy for artistic interest I painted the spinner green to match the insignia and gave it a spiral commonly found on Luftwaffe machines. The spiral shape was cut from thin paper based on my recollection of the decal on a Revell Bf109 and took a few attempts to get the shape right. It got a bit of light grey paint to tone down the white.


After that I started on the partly exposed Jumo 213. This was done by making a central coil around the wooden stick prop shaft, a shaped coil on top for whatever's in there (reduction gear, carb, cooling system?) and two smaller coils for the cylinder banks. Once superglued together I covered the whole assembly in masking tape and gave it a layer of alu, then black mixed with alu, then a patchy green primer-type shade seen in photos on the upper parts. One thing to note is that with all this on superglue seems to bond things almost instantly, so adding parts from this point had to be done with great care.



It is slightly hilarious that a couple of musuems displaying this engine have them mounted upside-down...



Having put together the radiator and cowling (which seem to be left attached in photos of engine removal) I found that the prop shaft is mounted slightly too low, the engine is slightly too tall and the thing only just fits into the outline of the cowling. Also noticed the starboard wing angled forward just a fraction but enough that the complete engine assembly will put the propellor slightly in front and misaligned with the other side. Ah well, just have to live with it.

[Siwi]

Almost there!


The Jumo is now bolted on the wing with the engine mounts and cowling supports in place. The supercharger ended up being quite a bit too small so I added the correct shape from some tube offcuts. Whoever commented that it would be mostly hidden was right, once the mounts are in place it is well tucked in there. From most angles the mismatch between wings isn't noticible, and I got the height lined up perfectly.



Radio wires installed using poly thread and pitot from hardened paper stack.



D/F loop aerial made from wire twisted around a pen - seems superflous with the spider aerial on top, but this is present in some pictures and I wanted to have a go at making one.

[Siwi]

And the bird is finished with the installation of remaining aerials and aileron hinges, radar receiver and some paint spots. It's increasingly difficult to find places to pick it up by!

This was quite a slow build due to having to take a couple of weeks out to do a beta build for Draco, and also the small matter of learning two cello concertos for performance and training for a marathon and half marathon, so I generally only had Friday evenings and bits of Sundays to work on it. New techniques I tried in this build were: using the coiling method for wheels and other compound curves; superglue to stiffen thin parts; masking tape for a metal texture; coffee as a weathering material; making miniature MGs; and the varnish tricks on the instrument panel. Some faults of course: I still didn't make a good enough wing spar to hold the correct dihedral; the engines don't align; wheels are different sizes and the canopy glazing was not cut correctly at the front. But overall an enjoyable and fairly problem-free build and I'm pleased with the result.


One other thing to mention is that whilst making this I often found myself considering the men who would have been in the real thing. What would they would have been thinking in the last year of the war, as they were pushed into missions against the inveitable collapse of the regime they had lived under for the last decade? They must have known that the war was lost and however many bombers they shot down there would be thousands more raining destruction on their increasingly shrinking territory, with the Allied army somewhere over the horizon as their bases pulled further and further back. The shortages of fuel, materials, possibly rations and the increasingly inexperienced replacement aircrew would have been all too obvious, even if it would have been impossible to comment on this in public. Did they talk privately in the cockpit with a finger over the radio, or perhaps even contemplate defection as occured with one Ju-88 nightfighter close to the end of the war?

[Texman]

Superb craftsmanship! Thank you for taking us along with you.

[rifleman]

awesome work big well done on this

[gomidefilho]

Great work my friend one of the best models in 1/100 I see in the last times. Congratulations!

[Siwi]

Originally Posted by gomidefilho

Great work my friend one of the best models in 1/100 I see in the last times. Congratulations!

Thanks, but it's actually 1/72 - not quite as tiny as your builds!