John Irwin

Next up, the fuselage crosses. I've always had issues with the hollow German crosses, in that the decal film over the center portion inevitably has some silvering or the raised edges are visible. So I decided to try painting them. I used the kit decal as a mask, carefully cutting out the white cross. Not the best media, vinyl masks or tape would be better in that they would hold tighter to the fuselage surface. As it was, even after being taped in place, I had to spray each corner while holding down part of the decal sheet with my finger. I think it came out ok, a bit of cleanup required but no biggie. Still need to fill in the center with brownviolet. Not sure if I'll use this approach for upper wing crosses. Those are much thinner, not sure how well they would come out. John

That water effect is incredible. I need to try this on some of my armor models. More Updates!!!!!!

Thanks guys, appreciate the feedback! I've added a bit of weathering to Yellow 5, much more to do but the rest will be completed after the decals are in place. For those folks building late war German aircraft, keep in mind that weathering should be held to a minimum. Most aircraft were grounded due to fuel shortages, some never flew at all and spent their lives hidden in forests. The ones that could fly typically only lasted a few missions before being shot down. At best, maybe some exhaust soot and a few paint chips from foot traffic on wings. Certainly no heavily faded paint. However, Yellow 5 is an exception. She's a veteran, a mid-war G-6 model that managed to last until the end. As such, she will have a bit heavier weathering. I already subtly lightened some of the upper camo colors, again nothing extreme. German paint was typically of high quality (except at the very end) and was pretty resistant to fading. Next up I used a dull silver to replicate foot traffic along the wing roots. Heavier on the left because that was the side that provide access to the cockpit but still some scuffing on the right wing route as well. I needed to do this first so I could then add the exhaust staining. I used a mix of flat black with ~ 20% dark brown and a bit of white. I don't use straight black, to me it doesn't look realistic. While I was at it, I added the scalloping to the starboard wing leading edge. I used a different pattern than the port wing, a bit more random. Still have touchup work to do on both leading edges. Anyway, some pics. Also started some weathering on the undersurface. Much more work to do in this area.

Great stuff, that cockpit floor looks like it has been trampled by a few hundred pairs of muddy GI combat boots. I find it somewhat humorous how quickly captured German equipment was stripped by GI's for bits and pieces to send home. I remember reading a quote from a British solider back in the war - "The Germans fought for their Fuhrer, the British fought for the King and the Americans fought for souvenirs". Looking forward to your next update.

Fantastic job of a very unique subject.

Making progress with the painting. Added the mottles on the fuselage sides. Yellow 5 was a pretty unique late-war -109, in addition to the mismatched cowling and wings, it also had what appears in the photos to be a painted over number 3 on the starboard fuselage side. Also had what appears to be a fresh patch of RLM84 in the same area (perhaps touch-up of some combat damage). I did my best to replicate these features. I also very lightly oversprayed the fuselage sides with brown RLM81 to darken the base paint and replicate the appearance of the original. See the color pic of Yellow 5 on page 1 of this thread. Lastly I added the faded black ID band to the rear fuselage. This was used by JG53 but it's not certain that Yellow 5 was assigned to that unit at the end of the war when it was captured by the US Army. Still have a great deal of touch-ups to do, also need to add the prominent exhaust soot. I think I'll lighten the mottling on the cowling a bit as well. Stayed tuned, thanks for all the great feedback.

Looking forward to this build, I too have a soft spot for White 13, given the way that poor pilot was killed after the crash landing.

Lots of detail painting ahead of me. I started with the mottling of the engine cowling. Pictures of Yellow 5 don't show the cowling from every angle but they are detailed enough to give you the basic layout. Latewar brown violet and olive green mottles over blue 76. Will still probably go back a second time and tighten these up a bit. Also, I forgot to mention this previously but another nice feature in the Alleycat correction kit are revised control surfaces. The real thing has fabric disks sewn onto the control surfaces (I read somewhere they were drains for any condensation that might get inside). For some crazy reason, Revell opted to replicated these as if they were made of armor plate! Way too thick and if you sand them down, you will lose other details. Alleycat to the rescue: The kit part is separate, the Alleycat part is already attached to the horizontal stab. Big difference!

I'm back... After a month of work to get get everything marginally ok (putty, sand, prime... find defects, putty, sand, prime, repeat again), I've got my Gustav with her base paint coat. I've found that very few WW2 German model paints look right without a bit a tweaking. I'm using a Testor's enamel for RLM76 (lightened a bit), RLM74 (ditto) and Testor's acrylic for RLM74 (added a small bit of green and some white). The late war violet brown RLM81 is from White Ensign. Straight out of the tin, it is very dark. I used it on the rudder which from the pictures of the real thing, looks to have been overpainted with full strength 81 later in the life of the aircraft. The color pic I have shows the rest of the aircraft to have a much lighter, browner shade of 81. I added a bit of white and approx 30% Testor's tan to the White Ensign paint for the fuselage and wings. For the latewar green (RLM82) I again used White Ensign paint, with just a touch of white to represent a bit of fading. Real happy with WE paint, very easy to airbrush. For the mythical yellow-green "RLM84" I used Testor's RLM76 white blue, with approx 25% yellow and a few drops of white. For all I know, that was how the German's made this stuff. There are no records that discuss the manufacture of this paint so it may very well have been a field modification, using stocks of existing paint. I sprayed a slightly darker version on the underside of the fuselage and sides, then added a bit more white to the mix and shot some random blotches on the fuselage sides. The few color pictures of late war, unrestored German aircraft show major variations in paint colors and extremely poor application. On some aircraft, there are visible runs of paint and it looks like a few areas were applied with a brush. I'm not planning on going that far but I don't feel the need to produce an immaculate paint job on this particular aircraft. Based on the few pics available of this particular G-6, it appears that this aircraft had a replacement starboard wing, painted in the mid-war greys. The port wing is late war brown / dark green, with natural metal undersides. This aircraft was also somewhat unique in having the cowling finished in overall RLM76 with just some lightly applied brown/green mottle. At this point, I've got the base paintwork completed. Now comes the hard part - adding the mottling. Wish me luck. Here are a few pics of my progress. Sorry for the crappy lighting, keep in mind that aside from the mottling, I still have a lot of touch-up work and weathering. Note that the rudder is just dryfitted in place. Have to clean up the RLM76 overspray. Added shell ejection chutes from scrap PE. As far as I can tell, Yellow 5 didn't have the fittings for an external fuel tank. I'll be cleaning up the scallops on the leading edge, still need to add these to the port wing as well. \ It appears that the tail was originally overall RLM81(slightly faded). At a later time, light blue 76 was applied around the swastika. This is pretty common on late war 109's

Cowling and MG bulges are on. The Alleycat upper cowl required a bit of trimming (of some of the framework on the Revell kit) but nothing excessive. I went with the Alleycat upper cowl because the Revell piece has the MG troughs too close together. The Alleycat replacement is finely cast and has the correct spacing. The MG bulges that Revell provides are too small, still don't understand how Revell managed to miss this detail. Thankfully the Alleycat corrections set comes to the rescue (again). It took some filing to remove the excess resin from the bulges but again, nothing out of the ordinary. As I progress through the build, I'm coming to the conclusion that the Revell kit leaves much to be desired. The joints of the three-piece cowling occur where there are no panel lines on the real thing. This requires additional putty / sanding work (and the rescribing of some nearby panel lines that will be impacted by the sanding process. The crappy engineering coupled with the inaccurate MG troughs and botched buele are leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Anyway, here are some pics of my progress. The basic components are in place, just note that I have a lot of putty / sanding / rescribing work still to be done. Prior to assembly, I also drilled the engine starter port on the starboard cowling and the muzzles of the 13mm machine guns. It's been noted that the Revell parts are a bit inaccurate but I elected to use them vrs purchasing aftermarket replacements. Note that Yellow 5 has an additional fairing under the starboard MG bulge. This was originally seen on the G-5 high altitude variant and covered the compressor for the pressurization system. For whatever reason, more than a few later version G-6's also had this fairing, although the pressurization gear was not fitted. Alleycat thoughtfully provides a choice of the regular fairing or the G-5 style. Note that I still have a good amount of work to do on this fairing to thin down the edge. That's it for tonight, thanks for looking.

Agreed that the Erla G-10 looks nice, I might end up giving that one a shot next. I'm curious as to what Revells rational was for the 3 piece cowling. I'm not a 109 expert, would that decision have allowed them to use the base kit for the F with minimal changes? I'm guessing it would give them the ability to do this for the G-2 and G-4 versions. With regard to those discs on the control surfaces, I can't fathom what Revell was thinking when they came up with those. No easy way to remove them without impacting other details. Thankfully I've got the wonderful Alleycat set which (in addition to many other fixes) provides replacement control surfaces with the discs removed.

In test fitting the windscreen, it appears that I am going to have the same issue that you encountered. My situation is made worse by the Aries cockpit which apparently is just a bit too wide for the kit fuselage. I've had to sand down the resin sides and then I found out that the resin instrument panel was also a bit too wide and was forcing the sides further apart. I had to remove the IP (a pain in the a**), file down the sides and then re-glue. It also sat too low in the cockpit so that had to be corrected as well. Although I like the Revell kit (despite the flaws highlighted in the review you posted), I am getting a bit aggravated with the overall design. The thee piece cowling is turing out to be a source of significant work.

Quick update, I've been working on the side cowling panels. As noted above, Revell provided solid cooling air scoops on the cowling. I drilled openings in the cowling and then affixed the very nice Alleycat parts over the holes. Definitely easier than trying to drill out semi-circular openings on the plastic part. I also affixed the Alleycat supercharger (turbocharger?) air intake. The Revell part is missing the prominent weld along it's side and the front of it is much too thin and lacks the very visible screws. While I was at it, I also drilled a hole for the engine starter crank on the starboard cowling panel. Revell actually has this but for some reason it's flashed over. Here are a couple of pics. Keep in mind that I still have a good amount of filling / sanding to do on the main parts. Thanks for looking, John

Thanks for the compliments guys... Finally had some time to devote to this project. The fuselage is together: The Aries cockpit did require some trimming but things seemed to go ok. The big test will be whether the 3 cowling sections (the top one being an aftermarket resin product) will all fit nicely. As you can see, the Revell kit is a bit odd with regard to it's design. I imagine that this was done to allow multiple versions to be built from a single base component but it does add to the complexity of the build. Due to this decision, you are required to filling unneeded panels / access doors. In my case, that meant I had to eliminate the compressed air service door on the starboard aft fuselage (this was used to access the pneumatic charging system for aircraft equipped with the 30mm Mk-108 cannon) Also deleted was the MW-50 (methanol and water overboost mixture) filler port on the upper right side of the fuselage and the upper oil filler port on the left side of the nose. The G-6 and most G-14's used a smaller oil tank. Later versions had a larger 50 liter oil tank that required the elevated filler port. The picture above also shows one of the areas of the kit Revell skimped on. Revell molded the various engine cooling air scoops as solid pieces. Thankfully, the Alleycat correction set (more on this later) provides resin scoops that are hollow. I'll be cutting off the kit intakes and adding these in a bit. The Revell kit also has the fuel filler port and side cockpit ventilation doors molded in the wrong position (and in the wrong size in the case of the ventilation panels). Thankfully, the Alleycat set also provides scribing guides to make the correction process much easier. Simply fill and sand the kit panels and re-scribe new ones. Easy-peaszy! The fuel filler panel: Cockpit ventilation port: Starboard ventilation port (still a work in progress): The Alleycat set provides dozens of very useful parts. Next up will be the installation of their corrected radiator and most importantly the resin "buele" (those large fairings over the MG breeches) that replace the much undersized kit parts. Thanks for looking, John

Great job. I've never seen that pic of the actual fuselage section before. It almost looks to be finished in something other than the standard light blue (be it 65 or 76). This color looks much closer to the late war "RLM 84" yellow shade. Any thoughts?

Sorry, I forgot to post it in the initial message. Here you go: http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index.php?showtopic=188856&st=0 I corrected my first post as well. Regards, John

Thanks James. There is an extensive build log here: http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index.php?showtopic=188856&st=0 If the mods don't allow cross-posting, just let me know and I'll delete the link. The short story is that the base kit is the Dragon AH-6J Littlebird, with the exhaust supresors and a few bits donated from the Dragon MD500 Israeli Defender version. 7-shot rocket pod came from an OH-58 kit, decals are from Cobra Company, most of the PE is from the Eduard OH-6A kit, minigun is from Werner's Wings, all the antennas and interior bits are scratchbuilt. The entire project took nearly a year. Recieved lots of useful info on this particular helo from the pilot who used to fly it. He was one of the original members of the Nightstalkers.

Old build of mine, converted from the Dragon AH-6J. One of the first "Littlebirds" to fly with the 160th SOAR (Nightstalkers).

Cockpit "module" is complete (minus the gunsight and some small bits that will be added later). Had to remove and re-glue the right sidewall because it didn't fit flush. Also had some problems getting the IP to fit. Just by eyeballing the cockpit, I think I have some sanding ahead of me. Some pics: Regards, John

Made a bit of progress - PE harness is installed. As mentioned, I'm not a big fan of PE harness in general. This one was ok but I felt it (and most of the others out there) are too wide. I carefully trimmed a bit from the side of each piece, also reduced the size of the lap belt padding. To give the PE a bit of flexibility, I annealed each piece prior to painting. I then pre-bent each component prior to carefully supergluing it in place. Took a few tries but things worked out ok. I'll be going back with a light wash once things have set up a bit. I also glued on the right sidewall. It doesn't fit flush with aft bulkhead, I may have to do a bit of sanding on the outside surface. I'll have to dryfit it to inside the fuselage to check the fit. I also have to tweak the placement of the shoulder harnesses a bit, that too will be done once the glue sets up a bit. Sorry for the crappy pics, I use natural lighting for my close-ups and there wasn't much of that today.

I was in at that the same time. Flew a lot in Hueys and got to fly in Blackhawks when they first came out. Blackhawks had the power but there was something special about flying in a Huey. Good times......

Thanks Erik and yes, the Dragon kit is nothing more than the Panda kit with some (pretty nice) PE thrown in and new decals. 10's of thousands of Hueys built, flown by dozens of countries and yet there is still not a decent large scale kit of one. Sad......

I posted a build log on ARC years ago but figured I'd share this over here. Subject is a latewar US Army UH-1H slick. Latewar mods consist of the "toilet bowl" exhaust supressor and vent sheilds (to keep newly introduced SAM-7 missiles from locking on), relocated antennas and a slightly modified late-war paint job (overall OD, no black anti-glare panel on nose). The 1/35 Dragon Huey kit is a pig. I spent lots of time filling huge panel lines, sanding off monster rivets, etc, etc. Most of the smaller bits were heavily modified or scratchbuilt. I also cut open the doors and used resin replacements. I spent a great deal of time scratchbuilding all the troop seats. I used the Cobra Company M-60 set and their toilet bowl. Decals are a mix of Fireballs and some donated decals to represent one of the last Cav units flying Huey's at the end of the US involvement in late '72, early '73. Hope you like.... John

Cockpit is pretty much complete except for the harnesses and some resin bits that will be added later to prevent them from being broken off during the assembly. I used a mix of tan and brown pastels to add some dust to the sides and floorboards. I don't think many late war German aircraft had clean cockpits. The spring of 1945 had heavy rain throughout most of April and since most Luftwaffe aircraft were parked in the woods and flying (if they had the fuel) off of grass fields, my guess is that there was a fair amount of mud / grime tracked into the cockpits. This would also explain why the landing gear covers on Yellow 5 were removed (a standard procedure to minimize mud build up against the wheels during take-off / landing). The pastels were purchased at a local Michaels art supply store. A box of 20 colors cost me approx $6 and will give me a lifetime supply. Beats paying exorbitant prices for "weathering pastels". I then added the fuel line that runs from the aft bulkhead, along side the right console and then down into the floorboard. This part was from the Revell kit and was molded in clear plastic to replicate the clear sight tube on the original. Some modelers paint the entire fuel line yellow but one reference I have of a late war, unrestored G-6 shows the line partially in natural metal, so I went for that look. I also added some scratches and carefully picked out the metal hose clamps that connected the steel fuel line to the clear site tube. Lastly, I added the control column which is a particularly nice bit of resin. Many pictures show the canvas "boot" being loose at the top. The Aries stick replicates this, although I don't know how they were able to cast something this fine. Kudos's to whoever made the master! The floor section (note the loose fitting canvas boot): The floor with right side dry fitted. Note that the weathering colors are not this bright in real life. I was working with some crappy light when I took these pics. Right sidewall with oxygen hose added (kit piece): Left sidewall:

IP is pretty much done. I didn't go heavy on the colored gauges, just a couple of yellow (fuel) on the right hand side. The Aires panel is pretty decent, resin with a smaller PE cover and a piece of printed film in between. I learned a trick from the "Building the Revel 109" magazine and used future to fix the film and the PE sections. It dries extremely clear and gloss so it looks like glass over each gauge and you can tweak the pieces into place (unlike superglue) since it takes 5 minutes or so to set up. Still have a bit of work to do on detail painting and cleaning up some paint errors (also need to add the gunsight but I save that for later since it is much too easy to break) but this is how the panel looks so far: Notice how the future looks like glass over the instruments: Just a couple shots of the dry fitted cockpit: