Revell 1/32 scale FW190F-8 By R. P. Hughes III

FW 190 F-8

There has been plenty written about the FW-190 that I won’t repeat here. Briefly the FW-190 F-8 was the radial engine version modified for ground attack missions. It had hard points on the center fuselage and wings to carry fuel and ordinance.

THE KIT

When I opened the Revell F-8 kit I quickly realized that this was a repop of the Hasegawa A-8 that was originally issued in the early 70’s. In fact I have an unbuilt Hasegawa FW 190 A-8 kit in my stash that I bought in 1975 and I compared the two. Even the mold blemishes on the inside of the wings were identical. Revell has substituted parts to complete the F-8 version. These include a new late type canopy that accurately shows the armored windscreen. The canopy has a late type headrest and the rear portion of the canopy is “blown”. It is nicely molded and quite clear. Other upgrade parts include a new instrument panel, larger wing bulges for the cannon, and wing hard points for the bombs included in the kit. Although the cockpit detail is a little sparse, it does include a nice rendition of the BMW 801 14 cylinder radial engine. That is one of the reasons I decided to use the Verlinden upgrade. The other reason was I had never worked with resin or photo etch before and wanted to give it a try. The kit has raised detail throughout, as was the standard back then. For more info on this kit there is an excellent review of this Revell repop in our September 2001 issue.
Rather than sand off all the detail and rescribe the panel lines, I decided to go with the raised detail. I did sand the detail lightly to make it less pronounced. I decided to upgrade the model with the Verlinden resin and photo etch kit number 1675. This kit includes a resin cockpit, fuselage MG 151s, injection tank, radio compass and engine detail parts. The fit of this kit is rough for a Hasegawa. There is a large gap where the wing and engine cowling meet. There is also a sizable gap where the wing and the fuselage meet at the rear. The wing roots require a little bit of filling and the fuselage itself took a little putty too. The fit is not all that bad, but if you are used to the fit of the new tool Bf-109 or the new tool FW-190D you are in for a bit of a surprise. This kit takes a lot of test fitting, sanding and filling compared to those new kits. It can be built up into a very nice model though.

I started with the cockpit. The Verlinden cockpit has a detailed tub and numerous resin and photo etched detail parts to add to the tub. The instrument panel is a photo etched surface with holes in the appropriate places for the artificial horizon, tach, and other gauges. Behind the photo etched piece you place a clear piece of acetate that has all the dials and numbers for the gauges printed on the surface. The back of this clear piece can be painted the appropriate color for each gauge. For most of the gauges this is white and makes the gauge detail really stand out. The clear piece and photo etch panel surface is glued to a background in the shape of the instrument panel. I fabricated this part from a piece of flat plastic stock. I used the kit part for the general shape. The detail and crispness of the Verlinden resin parts is good, but some of the parts had pinholes that had to be addressed. Depending on the part, I used either Squadron putty or gap filling superglue to fill them. I painted the interior a medium gray. I tried to match the color as close as I could with the pictures of the 190 A-8 on the excellent Hyperscale reference page. For you folks that have not discovered that web page yet, definitely check it out at Hyperscale.
It is a very interesting interactive reference for the FW 190 interior. I added a harness made from paper and added the buckles from the Verlinden set. After I had painted and completed the tub, I then began to work on the fuselage. This requires quite a bit of work. A Dremel tool or similar grinder is essential here. First, I opened up the radio access door on the left hand side of the fuselage. I used the grinder to remove material and slowly thin the fuselage behind the door from the inside. This must be done very carefully. One trick I learned is as you remove material hold the part up to a light source. As you get it thinned enough the part becomes translucent. Continue to thin the inside of the fuselage until light can be seen through the part. When you are satisfied the part is thinned enough, carefully cut the door out of the fuselage. Don’t worry about the door. It will be replaced by a photo etched part in the Verlinden kit. In fact, it is wise to cut the door a little on the inside of the line defining the door. After it has been removed you can slowly enlarge the opening with a sanding stick. I painted the interior of the rear fuselage interior green using Tamiya IJN interior green mixed with some flat white to lighten the color.

The next step was to prepare the items to go into the rear fuselage that will be visible through the open radio access door. The MW 50 injection tank is very nicely done. There were no bubbles or pits in the tank resin. I painted it yellow and added the connection hoses fashioned from lead solder wire. I use this because it is quite malleable and easy to paint. I made the blue oxygen tanks from beads I purchased from the local arts and crafts store. I strung and glued three beads each on some beading wire. I then painted them blue as called for in the references I was using. I then added the interior stringers to the fuselage from the photo etched parts of the Verlinden kit. I added control wires and tail wheel cable from wire stock. These could be seen on the real aircraft when the access door was open. With all the parts in the rear fuselage in place I glued the two halves of the fuselage together. Very little putty was required for he fuselage joint.

After the fuselage was joined together, I removed the instrument panel cowling. Verlinden supplies a replacement cowling that is much more accurate than the one on the kit. I used the panel line on the surface of the fuselage as a guide. Be very careful when you do this. Remember, you can always remove more material, but it is very difficult to put it back once you have removed it. I accidentally removed more material than I should have. As you can see in the picture, I had to cut small shims out of plastic and insert them between the forward canopy clear piece and the resin instrument cowing to obtain the correct location of the forward cockpit clear piece in relation to the rest of the canopy. I used Squadron putty to fill the area below the front canopy and sanded the joint between the fuselage and the instrument panel cowling. Next I installed the upper instrument panel in the appropriate location on the underside of the resin instrument cowling. I cut two small gun sight reflectors from the same acetate sheet that contained the instrument gauges. I used CA glue to attach them to the resin gun sight from the Verlinden kit and then glued the gun sight to the instrument panel. Next I placed the cockpit tub into the fuselage from underneath through the hole where the wings are attached. I added the photo etched gun compartment floor to the fuselage forward of the cockpit. The fuselage guns were painted Tamiya Acrylic gunmetal and mounted atop the plate. The electronic control boxes from the Verlinden set were added. Wiring was added using solder wire. Again it is malleable and can be painted colors to represent insulation.

I then assembled the BMW 801 Radial engine from the kit. First I glued the two halves of the cylinders together. Next I shaved 1 mm off the top of each cylinder head and added the replacement heads form the Verlinden kit. After this was done I positioned and drilled two spark plug holes in each cylinder head. Here again, I used solder wire to represent the plug wires.

The wires are attached to the head and run to the kit wire harness mounted on front of the propeller gearbox. I removed the plastic braces between the individual cylinder heads because they looked too thick and out of scale. They were replaced with wire stock. The engine was painted gunmetal and given a wash of flat black. I then dry brushed the high points with aluminum paint. It was mounted to the front of the fuselage with the kit supplied engine mount.

The bottom of the wing was added to the top wing halves. The kit supplied wing cannons were replaced with brass tubing cut to length. I also had to drill from the hole in the front of the wing through the wheel well so the cannon barrel (brass tube) could go through the well into the wing where the cannons were mounted. For some reason Hasegawa left this detail off. The wings and the front of the engine cowling were then added. Verlinden supplies nice photo etched replacements for the engine cowling doors. They are flat on the photo etch sprue and need to be rounded to the shape of the fuselage. I shaped the photo etched cowlings by first placing them on the model fuselage part itself. This gets the curve of the door close to the desired shape. Next I gently rolled the photo etched cowling replacement a few times on a cylinder shape. This increases the curvature. When the curvature is correct I placed the cowling in the closed position for painting the fuselage. Then I masked the canopy with Tamiya tape.
I decided to paint and decal the plane as the FW 190 F-8 in Hungary July of 1944 provided in the kit. The scheme called for a RLM 74 gray with RLM 76 lines across the surface. I used Testors Acrylics and lightened the base color a bit. I puzzled about how to obtain the effect of the lines that I wanted. They appeared to be thin but without sharp demarcation lines between the RLM 76 and the base gray. I painted the surface RLM 76. Then I placed thin strips of Silly Putty on the surface that would remain the RLM 76 stripes. I then painted the surface gray with an airbrush, keeping enough distance and angle on the Silly Putty to give a soft demarcation line. I lightened the color with some white to show fading and to get a bit of scale effect. Let me say one thing about painting before you say that I got the colors wrong. I paint the colors as I see ‘em. Sure I try to be accurate and try to get them close to how the original looked. Keep in mind that is a judgment call. Most photos from that era are in black and white. Additionally, color photos deteriorate over time. Color film was in its infancy at the time of World War II. At that time it was not generally known that the color photos being taken would deteriorate and thus little was done to properly preserve the negatives. Those color photos have deteriorated and cannot truly be trusted to show the colors the human eye saw at the time. So please, any constructive criticism is welcome, but keep in mind that model making is an art and this is my interpretation.

After the paint was dry I coated the surface with Testors Gloss Clear to get a smooth surface to which the decals would adhere. You can also use Future in this step. I used the kit decals. I got them to snuggle down on the surface with Microscale Microsol decal solution. This is a strong solution and settled the decals quit nicely. If you have never used a decal solvent before, be sure not to touch the decals while they are drying. In fact they will wrinkle up and look horrible while they are drying. They will settle down into the recesses and detail as they dry. If you touch the decals while they are drying they will disintegrate, so avoid the temptation. Once dry I coated the model with Testors acrylic flat. After that was dry I weathered the surface lightly. I first highlighted the raised detail with a number 2 lead drafting pencil. Next I ground up some pastel chalk. I used gray, black, and burnt umber chalk and applied the dust with a dry brush. I added exhaust marks along the side fuselage. I like to lay a black exhaust stream first. Then inside that stream I add a smaller strip of gray dust. It makes and effective and realistic looking exhaust residue. I have since read that my technique is more accurate for the higher octane fuel the United States Air Corps used. It seems that the Germans used lower octane dirtier burning gas that left dark black exhaust trails. I also added some on the bottom of the fuselage. I added some chalk dust to the inside of the Verlinden cowling over the engine and over the MG 151. It could probably stand some more weathering, as German planes at this time of the war were used mercilessly. I decided to keep the weathering light and add more later if I decided more was needed. One of the pluses of the pastel chalk technique is if you over do it you can wipe it off with a rag and start again before it is sealed. After you have gotten the chalk weathering to your taste then seal it with one more light coat of Testors Flat Acrylic. Another nice plus of this technique is one can always add more later, even after it is sealed under the coat of flat acrylic.

This was a state of the art model back in early 70’s when it first hit the shelves. The kit is showing its age but looks accurate dimensionally and can be built into a nice model. It includes an engine and is the 190 to get, if you want to display the engine with an open cowling. There is a rumor that Hasegawa is preparing to introduce a new tool FW 190A. If you don’t want to put in the extra work you may be well advised to wait for the new Hasegawa offering.

R.P. Hughes III © 2004