Revell 1/72 Focke Wulf Fw 190A-8/R-11

REVELL 1:72 FOCKE WULF FW 190A-8/R-11

Reviewer: Mark B (SMAKR Webmaster) (smakr1@optusnet.com.au)
Kit Built + Review Submitted: February 2009
Addendum supplied by Cristiano Griggio on accuracy

Kit Details:

Revell 1:72; #04118; Focke Wulf Fw 190 A-8/R-11

Aircraft History:

The Fw 190 was mass produced as a single seat fighter and initially outperformed the allied fighters of the time. It went on to be developed into dedicated fighter attack variants, missile carriers, torpedo fighters and radar equipped night fighters. The A-8 was the most successful attack variant and this made it suitable for the transition into these other types which were all produced near to the end of the war and did not see widespread service. The R-11 ‘bolt on’ kit added more armour, exhaust shrouds and Neptune radar on the wings initially with whip type aerials and then the more substantial antler type seen here. It was known as the Wilde Sau or Wild Boar and was operated by NJG/10 displaying a prominent Boars head badge on the cowling.

The Kit:

The kit comes in the familiar end opening box and is packed in one bag. There are three sprues of approximately 45 medium grey injection molded parts, in the now reasonably familiar detail and style of Revell's new tooling of the late 90's. Detail is excellent and engraved and there is a two-piece canopy set on a separate clear sprue. The wheel wells have molded detail, the cockpit and sidewalls are reasonably well detailed and even the upper deck behind the pilot has some molded detail on it. All in all, looks great in the box.

Instructions:

The instructions come in an A5 sized but vertically fold out leaflet which starts off with a brief history followed by multi-lingual modelling information over a few pages.

The paint instructions are typical of Revell with alphabetic labels for their paints, and then mixing suggestions for the external RLM camouflage colours. I would be using Humbrol paints so matched it with RLM 76 (127), RLM 74 (67), and RLM 75 (144) as a case of close enough is good enough. These were also used for the side mottle.

Assembly instructions don't really start until Page 7, and step 3, with the first two steps dedicated to opening up holes for the version you want to depict, and this follows a sprue diagram. Including the hole opening steps, the next few pages covers 24 assembly steps, which are easy to follow and provide enough information to tell the versions apart. Already with having to open holes and later having to cut out or open parts, the project needed some modelling skills. The instructions conclude with four view diagrams of the two versions the kit provides.

Construction:

As per the instructions, I went to work opening up all the holes to depict my A-8 version. This means you really already need to know which version you are going to do before you start working and study the instruction sheet for the right holes to open up. In the interior of the underwing piece there are a dozen holes, all close together, and thus it needs a fair bit of planning ahead, and possibly even doing a quick dry fit of later parts to open up the correct holes. The positive about all of this of course, is that if you do not want say the fuel tank attached, then you don't have to open those corresponding holes, which means no holes to fill later!

For a kit of this scale and from a mainstream manufacturer, the kit detail in the cockpit is excellent. You have a bucket seat with molded cushion and harness detail which is installed into a cockpit tub, itself having molded side detail, centre console, rudder pedeals and rear decking detail. A control stick also fits into the cockpit and the sidewalls of the fuselage have some molded structural detail also. The main instrument panel is installed which again has some molded detail. The only real critical part is that all the console detail is quite generic, but it was still fun to pick out with drybrushing techniques on the dials etc and save the scratchbuilding for another kit. Needless to say everything fits very nicely together within the fuselage halves, which are affixed together easily and left to dry.

The main wings are split into the standard WW2 breakdown of upper halves and a lower underwing piece. The pair of cannons and wingtip pitot probe are already molded integrally into the upper wing parts. The wings fit together nicely and are installed into the cavity of the fuselage, with small gaps at the roots needing to be filled. Superglue did the trick here. Dry fitting the tailplanes revealed they were a problematic fit, I think from the most tiny bit of flash in the tailfin holes and on the alignment tabs themselves needing a trim before they could be installed. Once achieved they fit nicely.

From here things get a little confusing in the instructions, because the journey takes different paths depending on which version you are completing, the A-8 or R-11. The upside is that the instructions do tell you which version so it is more a case of keeping your wits about you. For example, Steps 7 & 8 deal with R-11, then the following steps to 17 deal with both versions, before returning to R-11 for steps 18-21 with the remaining steps dealing with the A-8 version.

I had already decided on the A-8 so I skipped steps 7 & 8 which rely on affixing bulges on top of and under the main wings, and concentrated on the hood and propeller assembly. All fits very well here - the assembly is a little different than other kits in that the propeller is glued to the cylinder block (or "engine cooling fan" - thanks Stanislaw) which is not glued to the nose cowling, but glued to a stopper behind it (makes sense?). In otherwords it means that the cylinder block also spins, not just the propeller and spinner. This was then glued onto the nose, a small locating pin assists in getting it into the right position.

Being wheels up it was time to also close up the wheel bays. The wheels were first painted up and then glued into the bay, they are deep enough and the wheels of the correct thickness that the doors can still be glued over the top to close off the bays. The only real issue is that you have to slice off the top 3.5 mm of the main gear leg and cover up the top part of the wheel bay (if that makes sense). This was pretty troublesome, but with a bit of creative work managed to get a passable result. The tailwheel also needs to be removed and replaced with a half wheel for in-flight mode, thankfully supplied in the kit.

This is when you had to make sure you opened up the correct holes in the underwing piece for the underneath probes and antennae are added in the next step. For fear of breakage I actually left these off until the last part of construction. Also in this step is the long pylon fairing, rack for tank and the fuel tank itself. My advice here is to glue in the pylon and affix the rack as it looks like it is supposed to only go one way. I found it a bit of a troublesome fit to get into the allocated grooves of the pylon. The tank was added after.

The canopy fits like a glove and the sub assembly of the underrwing gun pods was easy enough, except dry fit first to make sure the twin guns are inserted into the pod the right way. If you do it upside down the guns will appear to point almost vertically down. If you are building the R-11 you would be adding the overwing fairings and the wing aerials. I left the aerials off for another model another day, but they appear to be reasonable thickness, and will of course need careful removing from the sprue.

Then the final bits to add were the various aerials etc. Overall a pretty nicely engineered kit with little or no real problems encountered in fitting parts together. A couple of areas needed test fitting first but overall a nice little kit.

Colour Schemes:

The R-11 variant is ‘White 9’ from 1/NJG10 flow by Oberfeldwebel Gunther Migge from Werneuchen in March 1944 as shown on the boxart. The other A-8 variant is an all over RLM 76 10+BX of an unidentified unit at Bad Aibling May 1945 with twin underwing gun packs. While this was the variant and aircraft I chose, I often subscribe to the theory that this is just a hobby and you do what you want! So I chose the latter but painted it the former, using humbrol paints as identified above!

Decals:

The decal sheet is a reasonable sized for this type of aircraft featuring the usual Luftwaffe crosses, unit badges, dotted wing walks and quite a few stencils. The decals look thin and are of matt appearance on the paper, well printed in the main but you cannot read any of the smaller stencilling. Sigh - again no swastikas provided. They were easy to apply on a gloss surface using Gunze Sangyo setting solution, but I found that there was some gummy residue which lifted from the paper along with the decal and some of this got on the model. Be careful, as one bit of residue clearly left a brown stain that I had to repaint. All it takes really is just to make sure you clean off any excess fluid around the decals. They looked superb though once sealed in with a gloss coat afterwards and then coated in matt.

Accuracy:

A convincing replica that scales out to almost spot on in dimensions. There's been a few comments floating around about some of the picky aspects of this kit such as the MG151s but for me this kit looks the right stuff in the right way! Perhaps the only other comment I would make as I would with any kit that has plastic antennae, the antennae array is probably a bit overscale.

Overall Recommendation:

Highly recommended, there's not a lot to say that isn't already in the review. The only ones who will be disappointed with this kit are rivet counters or those hellbent on absolute replication. This kit goes together well and looks the part when finished and that is what counts in book! Yes there are a lot of Fw 190's in model kit form and there are lots of debates about which is best. I don't think you can go too wrong with this kit, it wasn't highly priced and probably thus one of the better options in this scale.

Addendum on Accuracy supplied by Cristiano Griggio:

As with any other box of Fw 190A from Revell (the plastic is the same) the kit engineer got wrong the profile on the cowling (that should be a cylinder up to the rounded lip, whereas the kit nose is slightly tapered) and to make the mistake less evident they reduced the diameter of the cowling opening, which at a glance gives a strange, "smooth" appearance to the nose of the model. In practice, the problem is hard or impossible to correct, unless you completely change the cowling with another of the right shape. The thing you thought was the engine block is, in fact, the cooling fan that in the real thing was driven by the engine itself to spin at around 1.5 times the engine revs to provide cooling for the tightly cowled BMW 801 engine..

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