Fokker DVII

Revell 1/72 Fokker DVII (Rudolph Berthold) - Kit No. 04194

Scratch built the dash-board from sprue - not too bad but overly fiddly and not that great in camera close-up

Machine gun cocking lever detail made from brass parts from an old photo-etch set and hollowed out the exhaust pipe end with a tiny drill bit

The lozenge camouflage paint nightmare!

Painstaking painting of each lozenge square by hand - thankfully the kit has a complete decal with all the lozenge shapes on a black & white outline.

Stretched sprue for the rudder and elevator control rods/ cable

Aileron control rod detail made from cut sprue and stretched sprue

Since the struts were way too thick for an accurate scale model, I carefully sanded each one down by 50% in thickness making sure not to snap them (which I did once!)

Finished rudder and elevator control cable/ rods

Contact..!

Ju88A4 Mistel 1

Ju88A4 Mistel 1 with Bf109F4

Brief Blurb on type

The Mistel was a late war idea that originated at the german glider school in Bavaria and ended up using (initially) worn out old JU88s as flying bombs with either a Bf109 or FW190 strapped to the top as a control aircraft. I used the following book as a build resource:

Mistel: The Piggyback Aircraft of the Luftwaffe 

• ISBN-10: 0887406688
• Hans-Peter Dabrowski

Kit

I used the Italeri 1/72 Mistel 1 kit (No 072) which came with both JU88A4 and Bf109F4 models. The set comes with lots of additional JU88 kit parts except the front cockpit glass and fuselage. The kit is ok to build but the engine nacelles were awful to align correctly and near impossible without a lot of filler putty. I painted the kit with an airbrush for the 1st time ever and perhaps over weathered the wings. The kits says to use a Testors model master Field Green FS 34097 colour which is actually very bright (perhaps not correct tone for RLM 71).

Stretched sprue was used for the Bf109 antennae wire and paint blobs for the detail.

0.06in copper wire was used for the control and fuel cabling on the Bf109 supports (fore and aft)

The cockpit came pre-cut into 3 sections which was a nice treat!

Overall a nice build from an old 1995 Italeri kit.