Messerschmitt Bf 109G-6
| Kit: | FineMolds, 1/72; bought at Spare Time Shop in 2013 for $26.31. Model finished on 2014-02-07. |
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| Aircraft: | MT-416, PLeLv 41, Ilmavoimat (Finnish Air Force), Luonetjärvi AB, Summer 1950 |
The model represents a Finnish Air Force aircraft participating in large aerial wargames (dubbed "Turkin sota"). Special temporary markings have been applied, and the aircraft had a gun camera mounted above the windshield. Finnish 109s served well into the 1950s until eventually replaced by de Havilland Vampires and Folland Gnats.
Construction Notes
The excellent Fine Molds' kit which does not require much work. The kit's cockpit is well detailed at least if you leave the canopy closed (there is no "open" option without performing some surgery on the canopy itself). The instrument panel, however, needs to be moved about 1 mm backwards; that is the correct position, and besides, the canopy won't fit otherwise thanks to the excellent gunsight part. Eduard's "Luftwaffe Fighters" photo-etch set provided seatbelts. I had to scratch-build a gun camera that attaches to the frame of the windshield.
The only place where the FineMolds' kit requires some puttying is on the ventral side of the fuselage around the wing trailing edge, as evident from the photo. Otherwise only minor occasional filling/sanding was required. In the pictures below, the G-6 is on the left, with a G-2 on the right.
Basically, the aircraft is in the standard olive green and light blue color scheme, with (likely field-applied) white stripes in the nose, wings and vertical tail. I used Tamiya's acrylics. Photographs show heavy wear and chipping particularly in the nose and the propeller spinner; this was accomplished using the "spit-and-salt" method. Weathering was done mostly using Tamiya's weathering set pigments. Photographs of MT-416 suggest that it did not have national markings on wing undersides. While this strikes me as odd, I left the emblems off until someone shows me contradicting evidence. Model decals came from the kit (rearranging the digits on MT-461 gave me the right tail number). While a bit on the thick side, the decals went on nicely.
Initial cockpit construction
Note that the instrument panel has been moved backwards
Scratch-built gun camera
No underside national markings
More About the Model
- This model won 3rd place in "prop 1/72 and smaller" -category at Downeastcon 2014 (IPMS Southern Maine Scale Modelers), Saco (ME), April 2014
- My model's entry at the Finnish scale model Web site pienoismallit.net
- Scalemates' entry for the FineMolds' kit