This is actually one of those projects that I finished "by accident". I was interested in the shapes of the warheads on the nose for the Ju 88 and especially in the spotted camouflage. I practically completed the Ju 88 in order to see these aspects of the model. When I realized how close I was to finishing the Ju 88, I quickly whipped up the Fw 190 to complete the project. From start to finish, the whole project took about a month. This is quite fast for me, but I was motivated.

I built the model completely out-of-the-box, except for adding the line antenna on the Fw 190. The kit provided a small set of photo-etched parts for both the Ju 88 and the Fw 190. These consisted of little items like the seat belts and some antennae.

I had no trouble with the construction, but found that the attachment for the left wing on the Ju 88 needs a shim to get the alignment correct and matching the right wing. I found this out only after I completed the model, way too late to do anything about it.

One accuracy point to comment on in the kit concerns the mysterious upward firing machine guns the kit provides for the Fw 190. A Luftwaffe savvy friend of mine researched these for quite a while before discovering their true nature. His big gripe about them was that the internal structure of the Fw 190 just would not support such an installation. He only found them in a single picture where an Fw 190 sits on top of a Mistel under camouflage netting. Most people familiar with the Mistel know the picture I am writing about. After long study, he found they are not guns at all, as the picture caption stated, but are actually just the top ends of a boarding ladder leaning up behind the aircraft. DML even provides this ladder in the kit!

With careful construction, the trapese that holds the Fw 190 is stable enough that I did not have to glue the aircraft onto the trapese. I merely drilled three holes in the Fw 190's bottom and sat the model in place on top of the Ju 88. It makes for much easier transport of the model with the Fw 190 being detachable.

The Ju 88 camouflage is the real reason I built the model. I found I was looking for a challenge, and the tight spot pattern was exactly that. Depending on the source you believe in, either the camouflage is Gray-Violet (RLM 75) spots over a base coat of Light Blue (RLM 76), or it is Light Blue (RLM 76) spaghetti over a base coat of Gray-Violet (RLM 75). For this model, I chose to do RLM 75 spots over a RLM 76 base coat.

I custom mixed Testors Model Master enamel paints for the three camouflage colors. The spots are totally free hand air brushed (no masks were used). I actually applied the spot pattern twice. The first time I started at the nose (behind the warhead) and worked my way back the fuselage and out the wings. When I finished, I found that as I grew tired, the spots grew in size. This made the whole pattern look uneven with tiny spots on the forward fuselage that grew as they reached the tail with bigger and bigger spots going out each wing - YUK! I also noticed that after an overnight dry, my custom mixed RLM 76 was way too brown.

So, I remixed a better shade of RLM 76 and re-applied the base coat to the model. To try to keep the spots a more uniform size, I applied the spots as separate groups to the forward fuselage, tail, engine nacelles, and wing tips. With all these done while I was still fresh and rested, they were fairly uniform. Then I filled in the areas between these spot groupings, using the groups themselves to help regulate the spot size as I applied more spots. The finished product is what you see in the images.

The Fw 190 is finished in the "standard" Gray-Green (RLM 74), Gray-Violet (RLM 75), and Light Blue (RLM 76) with Gray-Green and Gray-Violet mottling on the sides and tail.

The decals are from the DML kit with some scraps used to add the numbers on the Fw 190 fuselage sides.

For weathering, I used my typical style of thinned down enamel paint washes and air brush shading. I finished the weathering with some dry brushing to pop out the surface details. For a more complete discussion of what I do to weather my models, see my posting on "Weathering Aircraft".