Minicraft 1/144 JU-88 Pt. 6 – Decals

Catching up on some parked projects, I popped on the Finnish decals on my JU-88. These are fairly generic and aren't all-together authentic, but they look smart enough.

The canopies are masked out at the moment while I protect the decals with a light spray of varnish. My splinter pattern colours are a bit light, but I am going for a pretty weathered finish for this model anyway.

Next I will start my shading using the same charcoal powder technique I used on my 1/144 Me-109 G-6 as I work through the weathering stage.

Minicraft 1/144 JU-88 Pt. 4 – Painting

Well, construction complete, though I have left off some of the minor and tiny parts - such as machine guns - until the main base coat painting is done.

It's a nice looking plane isn't it? I hope my painting can do it justice, I will start by spraying the underside with my Tamiya AS-5 Light Blue for the Luftwaffe RLM 65. All I masked out at this stage was the canopies.

The basic green was done with Humbrols lovely Dark Green spray (N0. 30) and there was plenty of masking to do to create a nice hard demarkation between the lower surface blue and the upper green. I do like masking, it's very relaxing!

And finally we get to the groovy bit - the splinter camo...

Unfortunately I didn't have a good match for the RML71 (Dark Green) for the splinter camo, so I used the nearest thing I had in my paint box - Tamiya's AS-4 Grey Violet. But with some weathering it should look OK I think...

The canopies still have their masking on as I don't want these to be spoilt when I varnish later on. I will paint the canopy frame last - perhaps with enamels.

Well, there we go. Now onto the touching up before I gloss varnish for the decal stage.

Minicraft 1/144 JU-88 (Finnish) Pt.1 - Introduction

Well, I decided I was on a roll (of sorts), so it's straight on with the final aircraft for my late 1943/1944 Finnish war game army air group. This is my bomber, the notorious Junkers JU-88.

Background - The Finnish '88
23 JU-88s were bought from Germany in 1943 - presumably to bolster more obsolete types then in service like the Bristol Blenhiems and Dornier Do 17. Small in numbers they may have been but as usual the Finns got a lot of bang for their bucks (Marrka?) and they devised novel tactics to make up for the Soviet's numerical supremacy.

One cunning tactic was that the Finnish bombers would drop into Soviet bomber formations returning to their bases and rather unsportingly bomb the unsuspecting airfields, destroying aircraft and supplies on the ground!

The Minicraft Model
Well, I was completely impressed with this kit as soon as I opened the box. All sprues were bagged up nicely and there was a very useful A4 set of instructions. The model comes with two colour scheme suggestions and decals, one for a Luftwaffe example and the other Hungarian.

The quality of plastic and mouldings is very good - although I can't say about fit until the next post - and the parts have delicate detail, with raised panel lines and seams - nice.

I was also impressed with the level of detail and the number of parts. I think this kit would give some 1/72 models a run for their money. And talking about 1/72 scale, the main thing that caught my eye was the size of this 1/144 plane - it must be as big as a 1/72 WW2 fighter and will dwarf both my single engine Finnish planes.

Optional parts are provided so that you can build the undercarriage up or down, but other parts are simplified - notably the cockpit, which is the blanked off type I'm afraid (or am I relieved).

Finally, I was glad to see that Minicraft had exaggerated the canopy framework just a bit. This will give a newbie like myself a reasonable chance at painting reasonable looking and neat canopies.

Well, that's the unboxing - all good so far - so it's onto the construction.