Hasegawa's 1/32 Scale
Focke-Wulf Fw 190D-9

by Chris Wauchop

images and text by Brett Green

Hasegawa's 1/32 scale Fw 190D-9 may be ordered online from Squadron

Chris Wauchop's great fondness for the Focke-Wulf Fw 190D-9 meant that he dropped all his other projects when the Hasegawa 1/32 scale kits came into his hands.

Armed with EagleCal's release EC#57, he set about building the kit with only minimal modifications.

Chris's only addition to the interior was a harness from lead foil and buckles shaped from fine soldering wire.

The canopy was dipped in Future with good results.

This early Dora had the five-piece gun cowl, so the panel lines on this part did not need to be filled and sanded.

The biggest task was adding rivet detail to the fuselage sides. Chris applied this detail for the full length of the fuselage from the nose to the empennage, with special attention to the area around the cockpit.

His technique was to first draw the panel lines onto the bare plastic using a 2B pencil, then marking the position of each rivet with the same pencil. The "rivets" themselves were created by pushing then twisting the point of a new scalpel blade into every pencil-marked position. Chris commented that this technique seemed to take forever! After completing the fuselage, he did not feel like doing the same for the wings.

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

---

The height of the tailwheel on operational Fw 190D-9s seemed to vary widely. Chris decided that the kit tailwheel assembly looked too high, so he added brass pins to the tail strut and oleo to retract the assembly somewhat.

Other additions and modifications include:

• A replacement DF loop formed from a staple securing one of the polythene bags in a Tamiya kit. Chris uses Tamiya staples exclusively for this task!

• The short FuG antenna on the fuselage was replaced with brass wire, beefed up at the base.

• The whip aerial at the end of the Morane mast was replaced with wire.

• Cannon and machine gun barrels were drilled out with the tip of a scalpel blade.

• Hydraulic lines were added from fine soldering wire.

• Aerial was sourced from smoke-coloured invisible mending thread. The isloators were built up from drops of Krystal Kleer then painted.

• A lens for the gun camera was added using Krystal Kleer.

• The missing section of instrument coaming crash-pad (behind the gunsight) was filled with a short section of stretched sprue.

• The flaps were modified to reduce the angle of droop.

Chris finished his Dora using decals from EagleCals' 1/32 scale release, EC#57. This set includes four interesting options.

Chris's choice was a machine from the Staff Flight of JG 2, with its characteristic yellow-white-yellow RV bands.

The first painting task was the RV band. White was applied then masked, followed by the two yellow bands. These in turn were masked and the rest of the airframe was painted.

The Testor Aztek A470 airbrush was used to spray Gunze acrylic paints. Upper surface colours are RLM 74 Grey Green and RLM 75 Grey Violet. The lower surfaces are all RLM 76 Light Blue.

After the masking tape on the fuselage band was removed, Chris applied national markings only to the fuselage and the fin. These markings were lightly oversprayed with RLM 76 Light Blue before receiving some additional spot weathering. The green upper surface camouflage colour was also sprayed around and over the upper section of the fuselage crosses. This interesting feature can be quite clearly seen in reference photos. The enigmatic "41" on the rudder was applied next, and oversprayed per the reference photo.

The remaining markings were now added.

Chris especially liked the fine fuselage walkway lines, but all the decals performed flawlessly on his model.

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

Model by Chris Wauchop
Images and Text Copyright © 2003 by Brett Green
Page Created 13 May, 2003
Last Updated 17 March, 2004

Back to HyperScale Main Page