Project I/19

Soundwave

The beardy man had brought new buildables for me because I didn't have enough already, and I didn't even know (or more likely, I just didn't remember) that MEM made more Transformers than just Megatron. Bwahahahahahahaaa!

Heeey, wait a moment... there, in the lower right corner...

Laserbeak!

Finished: Project IV/18

Ju-87 B-2 trop

According to Wikipedia the Stuka B was the first mass-produced model and the B-2 was also had a tropical variant. So, the idea I had completely pulled out of my hat was a technically believableish solution! This has not happened often here.

S 7 + A T

At some point a couple of those claw-like bits from the bottom of the airframe had fallen off, ended who knows where and I had no idea where. On this "no glue needed" model, no less. I guess I could've gone all my wip pics and posts backwards to find out, but what'd it fix at this point?

Below I have dropped my traditional walk-around -like photoset from a distance more or less that someone could actually have had while walking around a real world example. I didn't think of hunting down a few same-scale little folks to provide that sort of scale.

Perhaps I should finally consider seriously buing one of those ~40¤ collapsable photobox, I saw one at the office last autumn, it looked convenient enough. I mean, I've survived so far the way I've done my silly photos, sometimes bothering to gimp off the silliest nonsense to /dev/null, but if I could get away with less effort...

Recycling

Because I could, I took the baseplate I had made for an ancient MiG-29 project, even though a more serious hobbyist could assume that there weren't maybe that many ill-maintained, prefab-concrete slab airfields (or airplane parking areas for that matter) in the early '40s. With the dry grass and wind-blown sand the plate somehow felt like it fit the mood of the model. Someone who wasn't that suspicious of ending on weird watchlists could almost hear the fliers singing Stuka über Afrika! or something like it. Those krauts sure got busy making up weird-ass songs... wtf.

Withstanding the weather of Tunisia

The final details

I had decided that this plane wasn't going to get heavily dirtified, weathered or modulated. The sun-toasted decals (see last week's post) were enough in my opinion. The only clearly visible change I did anymore was that I painted the anti-slipping surfaces on both sides of the cockpit dark grey (Vallejo's RLM 66).

The always as happy-lookingly grinning engine's cooler grille I just dabbed with some black on top of what had already ended up there. I also drybrushed the exhaust pipe ends with a direct but gentle exhaust gas flow towards the back, both on top and bottom of the wings, and somewhat along the airframe itself. Maybe pitch black wasn't the best choice for the most critical eyes but again, it was more than good enough for me in this project. The exhaust stains weren't, as I had wanted, incredibly strong and heavy.

Why did I add the no-slip parts so clearly, then? I hadn't really thought of it much, they just brought some more details to otherwise so simple a paintjob. During the same heartbeat I also decided not to apply a wash of any sort.

Oops, I almost forgot!

Oh right, while brushing on Vallejo's matt varnish (70520) to cover my back I realized that the damn thing had some forward-facing machine guns as well! Instead of black or almost black I quickly painted the tiny nubs metallic (VMC 70863 Gunmetal Grey) and to the tiny tips I dabbed a speck of black as the open mouths of the barrels. I also drybrushed the radio operator's MG with the metallic paint while I was at it, to simulate some wear and tear.

Oh, the difference on the character of the sandy colour with a different lampset! The last photo also showed nicely (unlike on the phone's screen) that the main bomb indeed had the yellow stripes. So I had that provably documented after all.

Varnished decals

Fighting the silvering

Being the lazy pig I am I applied the glossy varnish (interestingly Humbrol's bottle says Matt Cote, but it has always been very glossy to me, but after a new search I found out I just didn't know how to use it properly) only where I was going to insert a decal and nowhere else. Yes, I was going to apply decals despite my neverending complaints about them.

So: I varnished mostly corresponding areas of the bottom and top surfaces of the wings. Then I varnished the rear airframe from the back of the canopy up to the tail wing. Finally, just in case I was going to use that bit that made me think it was the unit's individual funny thing. While writing this subsection the fact was that P("any extra decals") = 45%.

Decals

Spoiler: fml

Let's get that out of the way, everyone was expecting it anyway. I was applying S7+AT as this plane's markings to the airframe. The first side went ok. The second S7 turned into some purple profiteering jellyfish and I couldn't undo the first one anymore.

There I was, asking myself again: why in the Empire do I always give these pieces of crap more and more last chances? Either I was an idiot or an incurable optimist.

To business

Under the wings I applied the largest of the three Balkenkreuz, no issues there. I wasn't mad enough to use the slices on the dive brakes. The middle-sized crosses went on top of the wings and the smallest ones behind the tail band. All good there.

Then I started pondering which markings to use, if any. Despite my usual fears nagging on the background I decided to go with a set. From one suggested variant I took substring "AT" and used it at the end. To go with that I took the other substring "S7" (no, I was not going to cut those in two and apply them character by character) and the first one behaved as hoped. But as I already spoiled the surprise, the second '7' turned into boiled spaghetti and I just swore inside my own head.

Despite all this stupidity I attached the silly shields to the nose of the plane not giving a flying hoot if it was like this in the history books. As a personal comment I thought that the shield was ridiculously oversized compared to the rest of the plane.

Dullcoating

As the interwebs had re-educated me, I shook and mixed the Humbol dullcoat like a maniac with maracas, and spread it around the plane. That crap took way, way longer than Vallejo's matt varnish to dry, but I wasn't in a rush. I left it to cure over the rest of the evening and night.

The next morning this is how the Afrika's conqueror looked like. Maybe I'm just used to the sharp-contrast nationality and whatnot markings, but somehow I got the feeling that maybe I should've gone with a lighter touch with the paints. But then again, they didn't look bad, just quite different.