1/48 Dragon Junkers Ju 88 G-1

Model by Jakub Vilingr

Translation by Věra Vilingrová

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Aircraft: Junkers Ju 88 G-1

Pilot: Leutnant Johannes Strassner (8 night victories, 2 on this A/C)

code 4R+AK; 2./NJG 2; Chateaudun, August 1944  

I won’t embellish anything – the building of this model was a little complicated. Parts of the model were very coarse. I repaired mouldings with two layers of putty Gunze Mr. Surfacer 1000. The wing has ending bows divided, which are 1 mm stronger than the end of the wing. I had to thin the ending bows with the sand paper and then stick on to the wing. One of the halves of the fuselage didn’t fit the engraving on whole rear part of the fuselage. On the fuselage it was also necessary to engrave 5 oval covers, which are absent on the kit parts.  I completed the covers according to the publication Trojca with Ju-88 A-H.  The front parts of the engine gondolas, which should be stuck in to the cut in the wing, didn’t fit absolutely.  I had to sharpen a lot to make it right. The surface of the engine gondolas was the coarsest.

The last bad news was discovered while attaching the canopy. The canopy didn’t fit well and after attaching it, I had to cement the stairs with the help of Miliput.  In the end I recommend to attaching the divided wings before painting to avoid of greasy colour from the glue.  

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Painting:  

The second step was air brushing the black gray RLM 66 (Gunze H416) to the canopy, which was covered with the masks from Eduard and all of the panel lines of the kit. After the black gray dried, I airbrushed the whole surface with light gray RLM 76 (Gunze H417) diluted with Mr. Color Levelling Thinner in proportion roughly 1:2-3. I did the painting so that RLM 76 shouldn’t cover the air brushed camo lines with the colour RLM 66 for making an effect of destroying compact surface. Immediately after painting the  RLM 76 colour to all surfaces, I added to the remaining colour after painting the basic camouflage, the colour Gunze H74 Duck Egg Green in the proportion 5 parts of RLM 76, 2 parts of Duck Egg Green and 7 parts of thinner. I made the colour that way, which didn’t cover, but only tinted the basic camouflage. This very thin mixture I painted carefully to various panel lines on the whole kit. That way I gained perfect destroying of the design of camouflage.

After allowing the paints to fully dry (I let the kit dry 1 day), then I begun with the decaling. The decals are from Owl decals (Die Nachjäger W.Nr. 001") and I attached them with the help of  “waters” from Agama, because they were a little stiff.  I placed stencils from Tally Ho! with the help of some Aeromaster Set+Sol.  

The camo lines are painted with the colour RLM 75 (Gunze H69), diluted with original thinner in proportion roughly 1:3. The camo lines are painted even over the stencils as was it done in reality.

The final phase of painting was weathering with oil colours.  I used the combination of Payne’s gray, Raw umber and white. I mixed grey-green hue and weathered with it the whole kit.  After it I air brushed exhaust staining with the mixture of colour Model Master Aircraft Interior Black and Rubber. I used 90% of thinner and 10% of colour. The last thing I did was air brushing of check-mate paint Vallejo diluted with the original thinner 099.  

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The really last operation was making visible the vestiges from fuel and oil with the help of splendid preparation Lifecolor Tensocrom. I piled it up with thin brush and then blurred with the finger in the direction of a flight. I used the hue Fuel and Oil and sometimes Brown as well. Finally I drybrushed some places with white oil colour.

Jakub

www.modelplac.wz.cz  

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Photos and text © by Jakub Vilingr