I’m still stuck in an inferno of Messerschmitts and it doesn’t help one bit that Eduard continue releasing new versions. I’ve had the G-2/G-4 boxing since this summer and the G-5/G-6 arrived right before Christmas. I’ll try and do all four of them in one run, wish me luck !
Since I’ve recently done the F-boxing I’ve already gotten a bit of practice and even if the kits are near perfect there are still some things to keep in mind.
@Joaquin That comes with some responsibility, I hope I’ll be able to live up to it !
I’m back after skiing over the New Year, all in one piece and no bones broken !
Edges around the cannon port panels are tricky parts on these models, these are the G-5 and the G-6. The earlier variants have separate gun throughs that are also a bit make it or break it but this is slightly worse I think. I masked around the edges and used acrylic putty that was allowed to settle for a few days. I’m quite fond of using black CA for these kinds of jobs but it settles a lot harder and is a bit more difficult to sand so this is a good compromise.
After a bit of sanding and polishing. Looks good but the moment of truth is really not until primer hits the plastic !
Lessons learned from my earlier F-builds! I glue ailerons and flaps against the upper wing halves, hiding potential mismatches on the lower surfaces, well out of sight .
Every now and then I need to count them, they are sneaky little buggers. For the time being, it looks like everyone is here! L to R G-2, G-6, G-5 och G-4 (sorry, I asked them to sort themselves but maths isn’t their forte…).
Magnus. you’re nearly “flying” through these builds! And it’s a quadruple build I guess you have already made your mind up about the options. The G-2 gives the option of an Ilmavoimat bird … You get my thinking, don’t you?
Oh yes, two flying Finns are better than one! I know what I’m talking about. So here are the pilots, just waiting for their wunderschöne neue Maschinen …
@BlackWidow Thanks for the photo and the encouragement! I really have to get myself a pilot’s uniform like that, I think it would be huge a success with my colleagues at the office
A small tip for anyone building these: there is an open passage from the gear wells up into the cockpit via the mould recesses for the pedals. Seal this with a piece of thin plastic card avoiding paint sneaking in later on!
Note how their maths have improved, they are actually correctly sorted L to R now. I feel proud! These are all the parts needed, cleaned and put on sticks. Now for some primer!
The pile of tires is just a part of what’s in the box. Enough to both feed the carpet monster and fix punctures, with enough tires to go around anyway!
With a bit of luck, it’s primer time later on this afternoon! Note how they still manage to line up in order and also how I have installed the typical German wooden prop shafts (steel was scarce in Germany during WWII). Messerschmitt AG had a special employee, known as Heinz with the Hacksaw, whose sole responsibility it was to cut the shafts to a suitable length before installing the props !
Jokes aside, I have noticed another, very nice, thing with these kits. Eduard has kindly doubled some of the classic “getting lost or going ballistic”-parts. There are spare radio antennae, spare aileron balances and spare wingtip lights! Thanks a lot Eduard, well done and much appreciated!
A G-5 in a high altitude paintjob and a G-2 from the Finnish airforce where I’ve painted and masked off the yellow parts. Masks for most of the markings are ready so let’s go painting…
Not entirely sure how I missed this blog till now Magnus!
I’m a big fan of what Eduard and Special Hobby are doing in 1/72 with the 109, but until my build speed catches up to their release schedule I’ll have to vicariously follow your fantastic builds
@Russelle Isn’t it strange how things fly under the radar every now and then ! I haven’t really gotten used to how to navigate the “new” pages myself and rely mostly on luck to find both my own and other people’s threads .
I got to do most of the painting today on the Finnish 109, both the lower surfaces and the camouflage on top.
With tape and masks removed, suddenly it looks almost finished!
The pleasure of removing the masks is almost worth the tedious work to put them in place to start with .
Lower wings miss the white circles, I’ll probably do them later today.
These are the colours used. The Hataka paints come from a set with primary colours that I often use to alter the hues of Gunze or MrP paints. They should be from Hataka “Orange Line” to be compatible with Gunze and MrP.
Great to see your Mersu coming together, Magnus! That sota maalaus makes the FiAF 109’s look so different. Also a fantastic job on the MT-213 mask I just imagine it’s in 1/72, a lot smaller than my models …
And that G-5 was a high flying escort for the Fw 190 A-8 Sturmböcke?
Btw, my 109 G-2 some years ago is MT-230, one of the very few war survivers. In my Ilmavoimat book I even found a photo of it from 1948 with post-war roundels!
@BlackWidow I have been planning to do one of the black/green 109s since I bought a set of decals in Helsinki in 1992 ! We had a guide at Vantaa then who had flown both the G-2 and the G-6 after the war, he said they were “a bit tired” by then !
I usually draw the motifs in a CAD-program (CREO since I’m used to that), that’s fairly easy with things like crosses and roundels (I have US stars-and-bars and German crosses parametrized so that I only change the width to get a correctly proportioned insignia for cutting, a very engineery thing to do ).
A design like “MT-213” is a bit more complicated to do in CREO so this time I scanned that part of the decal sheet at 1200 dpi, adjusted “levels” in Photoshop (my old Photoshop Elements 8.0 from before 2010 ) to get a black-and-white design and then Silhouette Studio (the Cameo cutter software) can extract the cutting paths from it. It looks a little jaggedy around the edges but the design is huge when imported since it was scanned at 1200 dpi, shrinking it to the desired 1/72-size will even out the edges and produce a good mask.
Regarding the high-flying G-5:s, I think at least this one went directly for the US bombers. If flying escort for the heavy 190s, I doubt they would have had the 20 mm underwing cannon pods. But I’m not sure, description in the Eduard instructions is somewhat vague!
@Russelle You’re really on to something I think! More mask removal for the people !
I seem to have settled into a Saturday update routine, here’s today’s report:
I’ve spent the week adding the stencilling to the G-5…
…while it seems like the 109.s that the Finns repainted in black and green were almost devoid of it.
I’ll let these set for a day or two, then it’s time for a layer of clear and some weathering!
I’ve been working with washes to breathe some life into these (compare wings to the fuselage I have yet to do on the Finnish machine), and I’ve also started some detail painting. Also happy that I’ve managed to apply the spinner spiral, these are always a worry for me.
I’m off skiing next week but after that these should soon be finished!
Even better, no injuries from skiing-they can be pricey
Friends of mine currently holidaying in Japan had the extra cost of $1000 added to their bill to replace the filling the wife lost whilst they were skiing… Now that’s not fun
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I guess you have already made your mind up about the options. The G-2 gives the option of an Ilmavoimat bird … You get my thinking, don’t you? 
! Both the G-2 and the G-6 will be from our eastern neighbour.
