Airfix 1/24 Fw 190A-5
By Jason Brash
I present my first completed build here on the LSP forums. This is the venerable Airfix Fw-190A kit in 1/24 scale. It certainly has a reputation, and with good reason, but I have really enjoyed this build from start to finish.
I actually had this in the stash since about 1998 but never has the courage to tackle it. Flash forward to 2023, I decided enough was enough, let's just build it and have fun! If I bugger it up, well I learned something and will move on. In the end, this was one of the most enjoyable builds I have done. In fact, it started a stash purge, with half being sold off and replaced with 1/32 & 1/24 kits.
Special thanks to Bonkin, his build over on Britmodeller was the inspiration for me to give this a go and to Peter of Airscale for creating a brilliant set of 3d printed wheels for the kit, something the kit really needed.
The kit suffered from a very flat main wing and a warped fuselage, which all was bent back into shape via a dunk in hot water and a wooden main spar was epoxied in place to keep the dihedral in the wings.
The cockpit was upgraded, using the Airscale Fw190A decal for the IP, his 1/24 Luftwaffe belts and Luftwaffe placards throughout.
The landing gear was detailed and the bays were boxed in as the kit only supplied the back of the wells and the covers that conceals the engine. I also found the engine didn't protrude from the cowl for me like others have reported, I did reduce the length of the fan though and trimmed a little off the engine bearers, just to be sure.
All paints are SMS acrylic lacquers in the classic scheme of RLM 74 & 75 over 76. All markings are painted on, other than the stencils, which are the Airfix original decals. More details are in my build log, which I started half-way through, as found in the work in progress forum.
The aircraft depicted is Werk Nr. 2676, Coded KM + EY of III/SKG10 based at El Aouiana, Tunisia. I found about 8 pictures of the aircraft when it was found abandoned at the airfield & all of these helped with adding the appropriate details. By no means is this a perfect rendition of this Butcher Bird, but I am pretty happy with it.
Over the weekend our scale modelling show was held here in Perth (WASMex) and, as promised, I entered the FW into the comp, in the Large scale modified category. Well, she did rather well! It took 1st place in its category!
Enjoy!
© Jason Brash 2024
This article was published on Saturday, January 20 2024; Last modified on Sunday, January 21 2024