Hasegawa Focke Wulf Fw 190 A-6 ‘Red 3’ 1:32

Construction

The kit as ever starts with the cockpit. All very straightforward here, there are several aftermarket replacements available but I think the kit parts are fine personally. I used an Eduard PE colour instrument panel as I had this lying around; it was actually for the D-9 and needed a little surgery to get it to fit, its colour was also far too light for the rest of the RLM 66 interior but not a lot of it could be seen in the end. The HGW seatbelts are great but are a little fiddly to put together as they consist of `fabric` and PE buckles. You can see that I have only glued the lap straps in place at the moment as I will fix the shoulder straps in later on in a more interesting pose.

Cockpit

With the cockpit drying it was time to do the engine/cowling assembly. You can’t see much of the engine once the prop is in place so don’t waste your time adding any detail to it. One word of caution though (it caught me out); make sure you get the engine fitted in the correct orientation within the cowl otherwise the cowling parts will not fit together properly.

Engine cowl

I had chosen to do an aircraft of JG5 based at Schiphol in the summer of 1943 as its colourful nose made it stand out. Montex produce a mask for this particular aircraft (MXK32014) which includes the chequer markings, national markings, canopy masks (interior and exterior) and lettering. What I did find though was the vinyl masks had slightly shrunk and therefore didn’t quite fit so it was out with the Tamiya tape to make my own – it was a lot more straightforward than you would think.

The yellow was sprayed first (RLM 04) and masked off. The red (RLM 06) was next and then the chequer pattern was fixed in place and the black applied. The same black was applied to the cowl ring to ensure matching shades. For the spinner the same red and yellow was used to again ensure consistency in colour.

The Fuselage…