Finished: Project V/17

Last minute mumblings

Yeah, well. The spring went, as I think I said at some point, a bit differently than how I had thought. My scale modeling time was also quite a bit more limited as time just went somewhere. For that same reason this post, that I had scheduled for the second to last week of May, was incomplete and therefore didn't get published. Still, here it is now.

My only mentionable deviation from my previous posts under this same topic was that I repainted the launch pad again with Dunkelgelb (Tamiya XF-60) because the dirtiness on the weird bits just didn't feel right to me. Now you can see them "clean" in the final photos. Oh and I just took the last photos three evenings ago, even though the model itself had been finished for weeks (or could it be months already at this point?), thanks to my overcautious preparations which proved to be less cautious than what I'd needed. But you can't control life events :)

The background story according to the instructions

Here's the letter-by-letter copy of the instruction sheet's text with its formatting and all. Curious stuff, all in all.

"At the end of 1944 the Germans started to occupy themselves with the possibility of a rocket attack against the territory of the USA.

Initially the possibility of launching A-4 rockets with the help of class XXI submarines was considered but the development was in January 1945 interrupted and based on the requirement of the forces the development of a double stage so called "American Rocket" started.

The A-9 rocket had to be lifted to an altitude of 160km by the A-10 booster rocket and then it was able to cover up to 5000 km in 45 minutes. Before reaching the target the pilot had to catapult from A-9. During the flight th epilot had to be guided by submarines on the surface of the Atlantic ocean. Before the end of the war tests of the A-9 rocket itself without the A-10 stage were carried out.

Flying weight of the A-9 itself 16 260kg. Max. speed 2800m/sec. Engine EMW with 25 400kg thrust."

And those photos

A change in plans - again

I changed my mind yet again in the middle of a project. Surprise of all surprises. Anyway, I decided to use a couple of the decals from the set so I applied a layer of gloss varnish (Vallejo 70510) just about all around, just skipping the tail ends of the wings.

Decals

I actually ended up using all the decals, but somehow one of the bottom Balkenkreuz got partially ruined (the tips pointing towards the hull). Don't ask me how that happened. Other than that the damn things went on decently, even the two-piece swastikas.

Afterwards

As you may have noticed, I had left some details unpainted, maybe a bit sillily. I just hadn't remembered to do those before I went applying the gloss varnish. So I painted the wingtips red (VMA 71085 Ferrari Red) and then used that to the rocket's nozzle as the instructions dictated. Then I painted the steering vanes black (VMA 71073 Black).  Then I deviated to my own direction by painting the edges of the rocket's nozzle metallic (VMC 70863 Gunmetal Grey) because they looked better - or made more sense to me - that way.

With a matt coat

I took a few photos after the matt varnish layer (Vallejo 70520) had dried, from various angles. I thought that I should've washed it at some point, but as I hadn't thought of it then it clearly wasn't that important.

Finally I set the missile on its launch pad to pose a bit. As a whole I thought it was a bit underwhelming compared to something hefty, a heavy launching facility or something (the Meillerwagen would've given a nicer base for this). Or maybe my image came from the flat backgroudn of the cutting mat that really didn't work as a substitute for a forest clearing or something.

Camouflaging an early IRBM

Choosing the camo colours

I decided to use the RLM colours that the instructions suggested but the pattern I pulled from my own hat. I checked my paints and picked two that looked just like what was needed: grey, grey violet and Dunkelgelb for the launch pad.

The first draft: top surface

I started by airbrushing the grey violet (VMA 71128 Grey Violet (~RLM75)) liberally around the model in nicely wide bands, on the top half of the missile. Then I switched to the lighter grey paint (VMA 71103 (~RLM84)) and filled the gaps and redefined some lines to look a bit more pleasing to my own unartistic eye. As a whole it looked pretty functional.

While observing my own work I thought that the fuzzy lines just didn't sit well with me. So I decided to take another go at the pattern and for that I'd mask the edges to get some nicely sharp, clear borders. If that one didn't look good I could always revert my changes with little effort.

Securing some lines and refining them

The next evening I sat down to cut strips of masking tape and did what looked good to me.

Then I airbrushed the edges with the grey violet. After the paint had dried enough I tore off the masking tape and observed the results. Somehow this splinter pattern did look better to me.

Then the flipside with the same idea

To speed the process up a bit I started by airbrushing the whole bottom half with the lighter of the two paints. This way I'd also avoid getting any silly strips of primer showing between badly or stupidly laid masks.

Masking

I guessed what sort of shrapnel shapes would be nice and then applied the masking tape strips semirandomly all around. I tried to make the splinters a bit more irregular on this side but still to keep to the main lines of the top half.  All this was very quickly done, I just laid tape here and there at weird angles and without paying too much attention to any of that. Of course, in my rush I forgot to take any photos of that stage.

And then the rest

Then I charged my airbrush and painted over the uncovered surfaces. Pretty quick and simple stuff.

As soon as the paint had dried I tore the masking tape strips off to see the results. I also removed the canopy masks to avoid any unnecessary stickings. It looked amusing.

The launch pad

While doing everything else I painted the launch pad with the suggested dark yellow (VMA 71025 Tank Dark Yellow) that had a pretty clogged up nozzle. I squeezed it a bit too strongly and guess if the top rocketed into the paint cup and then splashed paint all around, including my face and hands. Funnily and luckily enough I didn't make a mess in the house (wall, floors or furniture) because I could've ended up getting some displeased feedback.

Thanks to my nonsense the first application came up a bit short. But  no worries, I was just doing this by hand while the airbrushed bits were drying. I really didn't think I'd gotten this flimsy setup masked and done without spending a mindbending amount of time and effort.

At this point I realized I had ran out of Vallejo's Dunkelgelb. After a bit of digging I found a jarful of somehow different, in my opinion much sandier-coloured Tamiya's paint (XF-15 Dark Yellow). I didn't feel like fighting with that and the airbrush so I repainted the whole launch pad by hand.

Then I painted some bits (those suggested by the instructions) black. I deviated with some other models I saw in the net and used more Dunkelgelb and less black. Those support bits I also messified up a bit with black but for a proper sootage I would have to look elsewhere.

The A9's canopy and general priming

The deathtrap

Sometime earlier I bragged that I had painted the cockpit's interior and a bit of the outside. Before priming the first (the bottom) half of the missile I mengeled the vacuformed canopy piece off its material piece and whiteglued it on. Somehow, at this point, the missile looked quite a bit more like a Beagle Boys' vehicle than a German Wunderwaffe.

Snow white and her one metric ton payload

As usual I did the priming in two stages. Even though I feel that this bottleful of Vallejo's white primer is not that good I used it as I'm both too lazy and cheap to buy more before I'm done with this one. Priming is not spectacular work so I was mostly pondering on how I'd paint the model whenever I had the time to get to it. I decided to use the RLM colours that I had bought for my Fw-190 project. It'd work out just nicely, I thought.

Of course I had to try if the missile actually fit the launch pad or not. Yes, it did and it looked... interesting. I had feared that it wouldn't fit and even if it did, it'd fall down more or less immediately. For a change I was wrong.

A launch pad

On some very wobbly feet

Of all the pieces in the kit the launch pad's bits were in the worst shape of them all. I spent noticeably more time on cleaning them up than assembling them toghether. Take the adjustable legs, for example: getting them and their foot pads together was a tiny act of war already, especially as the installation studs were more malformed than a dozen quasimodos. Still, they obeyed the blade and glue - to some extent.

Then I got to the next moment of pain and suffering, as the legs were supposed to have some sort of a notch where the deflector plate was supposed to sit on. Pffft.

I allowed the gluing of the plate and the legs to cure for a good while so that they'd remain attached together while I rotated the entity but so that they'd still be somehow articulateable for me to adjust any bad angles. So I glued this setup to the ring that can be seen in the next photo, again with horrendous swearing and fighting. The studs were awful and they just didn't want to cooperate with me at all. After these gluings had been curing for a good while again I attached the missing diagonal beams. Horrendous stuff, I tell you, horrendous.

On top of this construction I was supposed to install another, separate setup. This second ring got some weird upwards-bent things, some adjustment/control bits for them and some decorative bits. I really didn't have a clue what they were, specifically, as they weren't described anywhere. For that reason I also wasn't sure if I had "cleaned" them up properly, as the pictures in the instructions were more like guidelines, really. And the bits were molded pretty questionably, as I had already complained.

Finally three extra bits were glued on the top ring, bits that I guessed to have something to do with the rocket engine's ignition. I just installed them on in random angles for variety, based on my gut feeling and artistic eye (hehehe). Also, as you can see in the last photos, another protruding weirdly shaped piece was added. Because I didn't have a clue of what it was supposed to be - and if it was actually meant to be that weirdly shaped - I didn't do any corrective actions. Just to avoid making it wrong by accident.

Greetings from Peenemünde

Missile building

The Backup Guidance System Container

I sat down one Wednesday evening to work on this weird weapon. The first thing I did was getting confused, as the cockpit tube was to be built out of a couple of unmarked and obscure pieces. There was just a single dimple for the joystick on the baseplate that was the only clear and unmistakeable thing. Then I was on my own and just glued the poor backup's seat on the plate next to the control stick, hoping that nothing would be protruding in awful ways while sealing the missile's body. After a moment watching glue set I glued the two discs on the plate, choosing the positions by my gut feeling.

The frame

I cleaned the frame halves like mad and I still wasn't sure if they'd fit together properly and cleanly enough. After some dry-fitting and recleaning rounds I decided that it was good and glued the halves together - not forgetting the emergency backup guidance system's workspace.

The results surprised me very positively as the setup worked prettily and even the cockpit fit in like a glove. The rocket engine's end wasn't quite as pretty but I let it be, trusting that the model makers had had a plan and had known what they were doing.

Wing-like bits

The wings... the thrice-cursed wings. Or whatever they were supposed to be called, I felt they were more like the fletching of an arrow. No matter what, they were in a league of their own. One looked and felt millimeters shorter than the other one. And getting them positioned, aligned with the frame and tilted at decent angles, it was awful. The final look gave me strong '50s scifi vibes.

To the rear end, behind the nozzle of the rocket motor I installed four steering vanes, which looked a few times too large for this scale. Still, I didn't start filing them down but I thought I may have to do that later on, before priming. Or maybe they wouldn't look too bad when looking from a distance and being painted and all. Hmm.

Oh well, I got my missile built, it was just waiting for the vacuformed canopy as I hadn't painted the pilot's death trap yet. That was all that was missing anymore. Next time I could do any modeling I'd at least start working on the launching scaffold. Whenever that was going to be...

Last minute update: I painted the human container and the bits that'd be covered by the canopy later on with dark grey (VMA 71052 German Grey) and the seat brown (VMA 71077 Wood).

Project V/17

EMW A9 - Amerikarakete

Yes, this model was clearly on the kraut's Wunderwaffe line and pretty far out there to begin with. I mean, a radio controlled missile with a living pilot with a joystick as a backup. What the hell was going on in their minds, if anything at all?

Without further ado, let's go through the next project's bits as traditions dictate. First the one-page wonder: the assembly instructions. Rather amusingly the missile itself was a hundred times simpler than its launch thingamagick. There wasn't much to wonder about the painting guide, either. Some of the details like the red corners on the wings were mentioned in the assembly instructions instead of the painting part, but that sort of stuff happens everywhere. I've just found it a bit curious.

Then the pieces in their sprues, they were just about as shocking. Some of the smaller bits looked like they had more flash than material on the actual piece! That wasn't an issue, as this was a just for the fun of it -kind of a project. I didn't pay much attention to the decals, I noticed a couple of Balkenkreuz and two-piece swastikas for those who want to lose their minds with decals. We'd see the future of those much later, but as a constant reader I would not bother holding my breath.