Ju-87 D3 Stuka / GPM / 1:48

As promised in Ricleite's thread, here's my construction report - the cockpit is more or less complete.

I guess there's no need to introduce this popular kit from GPM nor Stuka itself, so I'll skip to a story, a story so horri-... um, well.

I was browsing my archive of paper models one January day (it's a cardboard box, actually), thinking about chances to build some of the planes and about the certitude of not building others, when I came upon the Stuka.

It has an interesting camo scheme and a beautiful texturing, but it's a huge plane without much detail for its original scale (for my likings at least). That's why I've come to a resolution to downscale it to 1:48, which is a common scale for plastic kits. I did some tests with small parts to see if it can be built and when I found only one really problematic part, which is the barrel of MG 17, I've decided to give it a try.

So, here's my progress so far: I started literally from the bottom - the wheels, because I had drawn the paper parts for the tread pattern of the tires and I couldn't resist trying how it fits.

then I moved to the cockpit - for easier assembly, I cut away the left cockpit wall and built it separately. Most of the instruments are not placed exactly, compared to historical photos, but my decision was not to modify it, just to add some details like wirings.
The instruments themselves are mostly cuboid blocks of various sizes; to help myself building them in this scale, I put a cardboard rectangle (or other suitable shape) into them before closing their walls.
Gunner's seat was tricky a bit when it came to shaping it into the correct shape, but I'm quite happy with the results, especially with the seatbelts added.
Uh, and the blue oxygen bottles were made from evergreen round plastic profile, but at the end, they're almost invisible.

The instrument panel was quite simple, I just had to adjust the colours before printing it, making it more contrast and brighter a little bit, so the details stood out. The top part is almost "from the box", just with some levers and pull rods made of thin copper or lead wire. At the bottom part, I scratch-built the floor window (or at least a parody of it) with its control lever. The rudder pedals were not so difficult as it looks and moreover, they're hard to see anyway, so maybe detailing the leather straps with the fasteners was somewhat pointless - but it's there and I know it!
The seat in the group photo is in progress, later I had to replace the whole bottom part, because it was too high. The seatbelts were made from a cigarette paper and thin wires as usual, painted with a mix of acrylic paints. The upper straps didn't come out very well and they seem too short, plus the metal clips at the ends should be triangular and not like this, but I was not strong enough to rebuild them...
The

next, when putting it all together, I made a mistake which required some dramatic surgery - but I haven't downloaded the photos yet, so I'll post them with the comment in the evening.
so - that's all for now, folks.

Hi Michael,
I've used approx. 0.15 mm copper wire and 0.2 mm and 0.3 mm lead wires.

As for the copper one, I got a whole life supply from a domestic electric cable - with a multi-strand cores, not the solid ones. Lead wires are said to be used for balancing the weight on baits for fly fishing, but several hobby shops repack and resell them here. They come in 0,1 mm steps from 0,2 mm up to 1,0 mm.

A good reserve of the wires is invaluable indeed.

and now the promised pictures: cockpit after assembling most of the parts together...

as you can see on attached image, I made a serious mistake - I forgot that I had cut the whole cockpit skin in two parts, so I glued the former with instrument board too high, onto the level of cockpit floor. The whole part marked in red should be below the cockpit floor.

Of course, I found it out when test-fitting the completed cockpit into the corresponding fuselage part. And YES, I secured all the joints with A LOT of glue from the invisible side... :gaga:

Anyway, after some complicated and almost non-destructive surgery, the patient survived and so did I.

So - the last batch of images for today. I need to print fuselage skin one more time, because I did some unsuccessful tests with varnishes; the printer is out of order at the time present, so I'm working on bomb(s), propeller...

BTW, the kit is missing the underwing bomb racks... Hopefully, I'll be able to convert that complicated round shape to 2D and then back to 3D...

I'm still waiting for the printer, so I moved to a glueless modeling - first unfold skin for underwing pylons (bomb rack). The model was done in Google's SketchUp using 3-view drawings as a starting point, then unwrapped with Unfold plugin for SU. It's damn small in this scale (about 3 cm in length), but I think it can be built.

The things are getting more complicated now, because the marking (the black cross) on the underwing side is in (probably) wrong position and collides with the pylon. Acording to photos of real Stukas, the marking was probably positioned closer to the fuselage, approximately in the middle of the outer half of airbrake... I think I'll try to build the pylons and if I'm satisfied with the result, I'll try to edit the wing and move the cross...

Quote

Originally posted by Ricleite
Pawell, are you sure that the pilot's seat is at the correct height? I didn't yet glue the seat in my model because it looks like the base is too high

The seat on the photos was already lowered by cutting about 1/3 of the bottom horizontal strip of the base. I hope the height is correct now, the top of the seat should be a little bit above the partition behind it - the canopy looks like a bubble a bit at this place... I've already tested it with the canopy skin and it looks ok...

EDIT: it looks like some of the seats were not parallel with the partition, but more like bent below the armored headrest - see attached photo of D5.

OK, test built of underwing bomb pylons was succesful... Here you can see approximate position on the wing (the future - let's call it correct - position of the cross is sketched in red). The lenght of the pylons will have to be adjusted using the overlaps on the middle part...

cutting the bottom part of the base to align the top of the seat with the top of the partition should keep you on the safe side... or, in worse case, i think you can always bend the headrest - which is what I rely upon, although I'm quite sure that the seat will fit under canopy even if it's a bit higher than the partition...
but agreed, the seat base is too big.

well, Ric has a bomb! but don't worry, we'll keep the world in balance...
it's only the basic paint, I want to add some weathering and correct some flaws, and finalize with a layer of matt varnish so it's not so glossy (e.g. the "crack" on the nose is almost invisible in normal light, but the glossy surface combined with light I use for taking photos make it stand out a lot)...

btw, if I'm not wrong, the bomb should represent a 500 kg one, which should have bracers between the tail fins - both 250 and 500 kg bombs had them (the bomb as built from the kit seems to fit somewhere between 250 and 500 with its size, at least in my case; but it's closer to a 500 kg one)...

/me is back! :yahoo:

I've been deported to a construction site for a supervision, but I'm finally back; no more helmet and reflexive jacket (at least for a while) make me hope in some progress...