Winter Warrior: Arii Bf 109 G-6

First of all, I have to say I'm shocked to learn I haven't posted in a year, but I've been very busy these last twelve months, delivering five book-length projects to publishers, and have only two competed models in the same period (it might be three by the end of the year if I really try!) So, apologies aside (including for the fact I didn't blog my 1:72 Leopard II from mid-year), here's an installment of the hobby saga from my workbench...)

I’ve long been fascinated by the Arii kits of the 70s, perhaps the first outing for engraved surface detail as we know it today, which only began to replace raised detail in the late 80s-90s period. These were sturdy, buildable kits with good outline, and while their details are few and soft by today’s standards, they can still look good on the shelf with some elbow-grease.

The object with this one was to make a proverbial silk purse from a sow’s ear, by drafting in as many aftermarket parts and features as possible. True Details wheels, Quickboost propeller, seat, joystick and gunsight, Eduard harness, brass cowl guns, Third Group decals (48-042)... I could have (and should have) added a few more, such as Quickboost pitot tube and Squadron canopy. There are Hasegawa parts here too: the SC250 bomb and it’s rack (this is the G-6/R-1 subtype), plus the supercharger intake, were unused parts from a Hasegawa sprue, and helped nicely. Certainly, even with the project officially done, there are still some parts I’ll change when I can.

This is my first ever winter camo scheme—an unidentified aircraft of 2^nd Staffel, JG 51 on the Russian front, spring, 1944. The idea was to evoke a field-applied whitewash, so I prepainted in black for a see-through look in the colour coat. Overall, it came out grimy enough to look like a recently-applied but already weathering field finish.

The basic build was straight forward, with relatively few parts. Swapping the cockpit details was easy enough, and I added the G-6’s distinctive yellow fuel pipe on the cockpit starboard wall from bent plastic rod. The biggest modification was to fit the propeller, which required the whole nose bulkhead to be cut away into a circular opening which would accept the cast stub of the new prop (which does not turn). The QB unit looks great when painted and weathered (my first time using a silver pencil for bare metal chipping on the leading edges of the blades), and was the last subassembly to be fitted. The wheels were more hassle than they should have been, rather refusing to accept the kit axles, so in the end superglue and patience were the order of the day.

The kit canopy was very poor, in both fit and clarity. Perhaps the plastic is simply too old (I’m not sure of the manufacture vintage of this example), but the one-piece clear part is a bit smoky and as a result the dark grey interior is almost invisible—very frustrating after the work that went into it. Squadron make a vacform canopy set for the Arii kit, but it’s the later Erla Haube, which is incorrect for the individual aircraft I wanted to model. The Arii kit has very specific seating dimensions too, so a canopy made for other kits will probably fit poorly all the same—and the kit part fit where it touched!

Same with the masks—an Eduard set for Hasegawa did not really match up, and was adjusted with custom-cut tape, which more or less did the job. We mask canopies because we don’t trust ourselves to freehand the struts with a brush (of course we don’t!) but the masks in this instance left such a hit-and-miss job that I ended up correcting them...freehand with a brush. It makes you wonder why you bother, sometimes. A sharpened matchstick was used to scrape away excess paint, and Tamiya polishing compound was applied with a Q-tip to clean up the plastic—not that it worked very well.

The Third Group decals were printed by Superscale so their application and finish are guaranteed quantities, and they went on very nicely over a paintjob of Tamiya Acrylics and Microscale clearcoats. Of course, it was only when I was nearly finished that a few tiny details occurred to me, like drilling out the exhaust stubs for an open look, which I should have done back at the beginning, (I got the Quickboost exhausts, too, but could see no way to engineer them into the model, so ended up not bothering.)

Arii tooled the main gear with the shock struts fully extended, as if the plane is in the air, a shortcoming of many kits for some reason. There are replacement white metal struts by SAC but the degree of compression designed into them is so small you could blink and miss it. The difference is only a couple of millimetres, so I let that one slide.

At the end of the day, there are nagging issues—I measured the yellow areas under the wingtips incorrectly, so the underside insignia are each about 5mm too close to the centreline. The flank insignia are slightly too large for the subject. The RDF loop antenna is way overscale and out of shape, and I’ll source a replacement if I can find one, or scratch build it, perhaps shaping detailing wire around a brush handle. The kit part is attached with thick whiteglue, which has only slightly more sticking power than spit, so it’ll pop off easily when the time comes. Same with the kit pitot (push fit only), which will get changed out for a QB part in due course.

I meant to rig an antenna wire from Ezy-Line, but the radio mast fits so poorly into the canopy that I’m afraid the pull of the line will just drag it free, so there’s a simplification...

Was it worth the work, time and the cost of all the accessories? Compared to the price of, say, the new tool Tamiya G-6, I’m probably still into pocket but in fairness the result is nowhere near what I would expect from the new kit. There’s much said about the challenge being the important part, that shake-n-bake kits do not make for real modelling skill, and this is true—but after the time, money and effort, I’m not super-impressed with my own result. I have another Arii G-6 in my stash, and I might repeat the process, knowing what I do, and using up the duplicate parts from the AM sets—but I don’t think I’d actually buy another. One experiment was enough!

Merry Christmas,

Mike Adamson

 

Warning — Rant: After-Market Parts and the Cynicism of Gilding the Lilly

 

 I have Revell’s classic 1:48th scale Grumman Cougar on the shelf. It’s the only time that this subject has been done in this scale. The copyright of the edition is 1985 but the kit engineering is a good twenty years earlier. It has raised surface detail, including the so-popular rivets of the time, not much going on inside the intakes, and a single piece cockpit insert combining pilot, seat, floor, panel and detail behind the seat (which, to be fair, is more than many got in those days). It ohh-soo needs a resin cockpit, and resin wheel well inserts, and some of those Seamless Suckers to back the intakes, not to mention weighted tires and maybe a crystal clear vacform hood that can be posed open, a set of vinyl masks, and of course a wide selection of marking options released by the decal guys.

Where are they?

There’s an echoing void. I can sand back the detail and rescribe the bird, sure, and I could use Panther accessories (assuming they’ve been produced for the newer Trumpeter Panther), and piece together my markings from generic sheets, masks and careful paintwork. Yes, that’s a valid approach, and nothing a modeller wouldn’t have to do if the AM industry was less active than it is. My point is just that: the AM industry is volatile in its ability to churn out product, but the choice of product and how it is marketed seem to play—cynically—only to certain parts of the hobby. 

 The pics above are the collection of AMs I put together for a single project. I know what you’re thinking – for a bloke who complains about AMs, I seem to have a lot of them. And I’m not really complaining, just having a bit of a whinge… I mean, where would we be without companies like Eduard, Legends, Verlinden, Mig Productions, Coree and the like? It could be said Francios Verlinden started the AM industry thirty years ago, giving modellers things they really wanted (to make up for the shortfalls in commercial kits between affordable practicality and actual accuracy). That was a great thing, and transformed the hobby, allowing more modellers to build truly spectacular models without needing to evolve the skills of a master machinist with infinite time and resources to do so.

The market proved to be an accommodating one, and the quality race was on: the kit companies raised their own game, in one generation injection molded plastic has gone from often clunky to often breathtaking, and the resin and photoetch guys have kept pace, not simply providing alternatives but striving to correct and outdo their plastic counterparts.

Yet there comes a point when this process becomes cynical.

 Tasca burst on the injection mold scene in 2003 with a Panzer II in 1:35th scale, and reviewers ran out of superlatives... Not just accuracy of outline and a high parts count, with individual molding of detail parts for maximum accuracy and realism, but a fineness of detail resolution never seen before (and probably nowhere else even now), such as butterfly bolts (wingnuts) rendered in actual, crisp detail though the parts were less than 1mm in size. The model featured working plastic torsion bar suspension, something done elsewhere since (AFV Club’s Tiger I, IIRC, featured the same), but which at the time was a jaw-dropper. Surely no finer or more ambitious plastic engineering had ever been attempted, and what more could a modeller ask for? Especially at the comparably high price the kit commanded (and still does).

Well, after-markets. You have to have a photoetched detail set to make it better... Or so say the guys who make them, and have the gall to offer an expensive fret of etched metal because the reviewers who raved about the kit were obviously wrong to praise it so highly. Hey, scrape away that incredible styrene molding, stick on some of our metal, then it’ll really be accurate!

 You see the same thing with aircraft. The finest kits are the ones for which ‘updates’ are offered, or corrections, kits which already feature some of the best components on the market and build into pretty darn good models just as they are, while older, or more affordable, kits that could really do with a helping hand, are pretty much ignored. True Details produced a host of fine parts for a wide variety of subjects many years ago, but their productivity has been much lower in recent times, and that could be symptomatic of the same thing: the marketplace that must have its AMs doesn’t buy cheapy kits and oldies to start with, and we can expect the AM companies to have done painstaking market research to properly target their products. 

It is as it is. If you want to make an expensive kit even more expensive then they’re ready and willing to take your money -- that’s the nature of a commercial enterprise. And it’s true that there are modern kits which do indeed fall down on the job: Trumpeter’s new 1:32nd scale Grumman Bearcat faired pretty well in it’s review in the pages of FineScale Modeler, but others were not so kind to it, one English magazine’s build-up feature laid bare the bones of that particular skeleton and after that I lost my enthusiasm for scraping together the asking price. Maybe with a comprehensive AM set to fix the problems it might be worth the effort, if such a set could correct the engineering deficiencies of, for instance, the wingfolds (perfect if depicting them folded, but the fit is hopeless for the extended configuration, which is, after all, the most likely form in which most buyers would choose to depict the aircraft).

I guess the point I’m making is simply this: while I acknowledge that the top end of the market is a legitimate place to play to, it would be nice if the AM guys aimed a bit lower at times too. Not necessarily that old Cougar, she’s a rarity these days, of course she is (to tell the truth it’s an awful kit by modern standards, and in the cold light of day I don’t think it’s actually worth saving!), and any product must have a big enough potential market to justify its existence. But bits and pieces to trick out kits that actually need it would be nice. (And yes, Eduard and others have gone round and diligently produced PE sets for, e.g., thirty-year old Tamiya armour, which blunts my argument somewhat, even if the sets are often more expensive than prices at which you can pick up the kits!)

But I like the Quickboost approach best: replacement parts for an ever-growing range of items, with superior detail at an affordable price, and so light-weight they mail for free from many companies... Yeah, now there’s my idea of an AM outfit!

Rant over, normal services will be resumed as of the next post!