FW190 A-8

After last week's DH Vampire I'm now presenting a 1/72nd scale aircraft that I've built right from the start as a display model rather than with wargaming in mind.

The Airfix FW190 was available at an attractive price from the Aldi supermarket chain a few years ago and I picked one up thinking it might be useful one day. After that it sat on the shelf until recently when the Youtube algorithm threw up some suggestions including the Model Minutes channel.

Inspired to have a go at putting together a kit for its own sake, I decided to build the FW190 straight out of the box.  

There were one or two slightly tricky bits around positioning parts of the undercarriage and the armour protection behind the pilot's head but otherwise it was pretty straightforward to build.

The quality of the acrylic paints that came with this starter set left a little to be desired. It wasn't easy to get a smooth finish and a bit of decal silvering is visible despite my trying a softening solution I picked up a year or so ago.

The biggest gripe I have is that the colour of at least one of paints provided bore no resemblance to that depicted on the box illustrations. I ended up replacing the recommended colour (the dark element of the upper surface camouflage) with Vallejo German Camouflage Black Brown, which I happened to have bottle of - it's a terrifically useful colour for all kinds of jobs. I'm pleased with the effect.

To allow for sale in Germany and a couple of other European countries, the decal sheet comes without the swastikas that should be displayed on the tailplane. I looked though the piles of ancient decals I have left over from my long-ago modelling days but there was nothing suitable.

I'm basically pleased with how it's turned out. I can't see myself going back to building kits for the sake of it as a regular thing but the idea of building a small collection of early jet fighters is kind of tempting.