Eino Luukkanen's Brewster 239 in 1/48 scale

Classic Airframes Brewster 239.

For my next build I chose to pull a Classic Airframes, (CA), kit of the Brewster Model 239 out of the stash. I wanted to add the Brewster to my slowly growing collection of Finnish Air Force models. I have plenty of references and color schemes to choose from. The CA kit offers a fine decal sheet for several different Finnish schemes. In addition, I have the wonderful reference book, Camouflage and Decals, which also provides a couple of choices.

Luukkanen and his 239. Note the beer labels affixed to the tail fin as victory markings!

I chose to depict Eino Lukkanen's Brewster # BW-393. This particular aircraft would be handed down through several different ace pilots and would eventually score over 40 kills, making it, ironically, one of the most successful fighter airframes in history! Quite the accomplishment for the humble little F2A.

The tail of my Brewster displaying those "kill markings".

I certainly had no shortage of references for this build...

There's no shortage of references for the Brewster!

Overall, this kit looks pretty good on the trees! It comes with PE and some resin parts. 

As usual, assembly begins with the interior bits. They are a little fiddly, and the fit isn't perfect so you have to take your time there. The interior of the wheel wells has an impressive amount of struts, guns and ammo bins. Some location points of these parts are molded lines and don't really make a positive fit, it's easy to misalign them. When I finally completed the subassemblies, the guns were pointing at a weird angle. I realized, however, that it wasn't going to be visible so I left them be.

Part of the cockpit is assembled at this time. The floor is installed along with two levers; the control stick and a second stick on the right side. The control stick appears way to long to me, and I'm sure it will get knocked off when I mask the cockpit, so I removed it, to be shortened and reinstalled later.

CA includes you a PE fret which contains several little boxes which you fold and glue to the sidewalls of the cockpit. The folding actually went pretty well. I used a wood glue to fix them to the walls.

The engine itself is nicely molded but is missing the pushrod sleeves which are supposed to be in the front of each cylinder. I'm surprised CA missed those. I used stretched black sprue inserted into many tiny holes I drilled out. 

I continued working on the cockpit, installing the pilot's seat and adding the seat harnesses from the PE fret.

After completing most of the interior, it was time to button up the fuselage.  This went fairly easily, I had to finagle a few of the struts and firewall to get everything halfway straight. Next came the wings. Again no serious problems. 

The tail cone is molded separately. This was the one problem area I had. With the tail cone aligned to minimize gaps with the fuselage, there was a significant gat between the rudder and the tailcone. I ended up filling some of the gap.

Time to begin painting! First, everything got a coat of Tamiya's liquid death, their Fine Surface Primer. This stuff is so nasty that I can only use it in the garage! 

Next, I shot a white base and then XF-3, Yellow for the ID bands. 

Then I sprayed the ridder. First, I used straight XF-8, Flat Blue. This color is supposed to be close to the blue used in the Finnish national insignia. The XF-8 was a little too blue for my taset, so I repainted it, adding a little grey to tone it down,

Then came XF-9, Flat Aluminum for the undersurfaces. These early camouflaged Brewsters  retained aluminum undersides, it wasn't until later in the war that the Finns switched to the pale blue undersurfaces.

Now time for the uppersurfaces. I'm trying something new this time. For the olive, I picked up some AK 3rd generation acrylic paint, their Finnish WWII set. The green they have has a nice olive tone that I thought looked better than my previous standby, XF-67, Nato Green.

The AK paint comes in a little dropper style bottle. When I poured some out, it was pretty thick and clumpy! It does seem to thin with either water of alcohol though, so I was able to use it. I like the color, but I don't know if it would be worth the trouble, I'll just try to come up with a mix of  Tamiya once this runs out.

AK's "Command Green" applied.

I used Tamiya's XF-69, Nato Black for the other camo color. I tried free-handing using my Badger Velocity. What a fun airbrush!

Tape off!

I noticed one problem with my painting, the are behind the fuselage band on the starboard side ought to be green, not black, so I had to go back and do a little tough up. What I like about airbrushing is that the touch-ups can be done without building up huge layers of paint.

There, that's better.

Decal time! I started to use CA's decals but I managed to destroy the serial number right off the bat. I switched to the decals from the "Camouflage and Decals" sheet and these went on nicely. The CA decals are good, but a little delicate and many are two part, which doubles my chance to mess up. The "Camouflage and Decals" sheet are one piece, but the are very well printed.

An interesting thing about these aircraft markings is the serial numbers were frequently done in two colors to stand out from their background. This can be tricky to pull off on a model if your paint isn't quite right. I got pretty lucky with this one.

Note the contrasting serial number.

On the starboard side, you didn't have an individual number divided, you just need a green "3". For some reason, the sheet I was using didn't include that. But the CA sheet did have a green "3" that I could use.

Getting near the end now. I could not find an aerial mast, I don't know if I lost it or it was never there. In any case, it is pretty easy to find a replacement in the parts box. The masts on the Finnish Brewsters seem unusually long. Easy Line was used for the aerial wire.

One final detail was the tailwheel. CA's instructions would have you install a tiny, solid naval type tailwheel on the aircraft, but most pictures show a larger pneumatic type. CA actually does include this type but doesn't indicate it in the instructions. You simply snip off the small tailwheel and then drill a hole for the larger wheel.  

One feature I added late in the game; the kit's exhaust pipes are just plastic cylinders that are stuck to the lower cowling. Any easy improvement was to replace the kit's parts with short bits of brass tubing. Their location is well marked by etchings on the lower rear cowling which are easily drilled out to accept the tubing which is epoxied into place. The result is much better looking than the kit's parts.

Finally finished! I did not cement the sliding canopy. It doesn't really fit well open and the fit isn't perfect closed. Maybe I'll get a vac-formed slider one of these days to replace it.

Note the larger pneumatic type tailwheel.

Classic Airframes' Brewster Model 239 and Tamiya's F2A-2

On the whole, this wasn't a bad kit. A little fiddly at times but it went together okay in the end. The decals are great, but very delicate.  It will make a nice addition to my Finnish AF collection!

Roden's 1/32 scale Pfalz D.III

 

Roden's Pfalz D.III

Ltn d R Aloys Heldmann with his Pfalz.

The Pfalz Flugzeugwerke was founded in 1913 and built a number of derivative aircraft designs, including monoplanes based on the Morane Saulnier Type H and L. By 1916 Pfalz had produced a monoplane e-type very similar to the Fokker Eindecker series. By the end of that year Pfalz was directed to produce the Roland DI followed by the DII and DIIa variants until mid 1917. By that time Pfalz had developed their own biplane fighter, the DIII when it was realized that the Roland design was inadequate.

The design of the Pfalz DIII was influenced by the impact of the French Nieuport and it's sesquiplane, (1 1/2 wing) design, like many other German aircraft manufacturers, notably Albatros. The Pfalz designers, however, did make one significant improvement on the Nieuport's design by incorporating two spars in the lower wing, thus saving the design from the inherent  weakness of most sesquiplanes; an unstable lower wing which could twist about the single spar. This was a significant problem which the Albatros DIII and DV designs never really overcame.

The Pfalz DIII was one of the most graceful looking aircraft to be developed in WWI, and it's sturdy construction, (plywood laminated shell of a fuselage), made it one of the more robust types of that era.

That said, the Pfalz DIII was not an outstanding success. It wasn't particularly nimble,  it's rate of climb was not too impressive and it's plywood fuselage sometimes warped and affected handling. 

Still, it is one of the prettiest of WWI fighters with nice, graceful lines. 

For this build I am using Roden's 1/32 scale Pfalz DIII. I also had a decal sheet and the photo etch sheet from Squadron/Encore's "Blue Max Pfalz", that I got from eBay. I was happy to score those decals since Roden's tend to be pretty fragile.

To begin, I assemble the nice little Mercedes DIII. Roden gives you a good basis for a little detailing. In this case, I tried to simulate the valve return springs with this copper wire wound around stretched sprue. The result looked promising but I have to say that on the finished model, I can't really see them! 

After paint, its very hard to see the darned springs!

Assembly continued with the interior. As usual, Roden gives you a really nice basis for the cockpit. I added a seat cushion and the seat belts came from the "Blue Max" PE sheet.

Everything installed.

When closing the fuselage, I did have some trouble with alignment of the engine in the nose. The engine was pointing ever so slightly downward. It took a little work to get it looking right. Later, I also discovered that the motor ended up pushed over a little too far to the right. I couldn't fix that but I was able to basically hide that problem!

On attaching the lower wings, I found the port wing was hanging a little lower than the starboard wing, so I had to adjust that a bit. Then I applied some dark paint to the wing's undersurfaces. I then masked them and sprayed Tamiya Flat Aluminum. Removing the tape, I then sprayed  a thinned coat of aluminum hoping to create a shadow effect. Not sure if that really worked.

Some pre-shading on the wings'

I had initially planned on doing an overall aluminum finish common to most Pfalz DIII's but decided instead to go with the interesting purple/green camo found on some very early Pfalz fighters. I used a mix of Tamiya acrylics for the purple, and Tamiya XF-27, Black/Green for the upper colors. The undersides remained aluminum.

After applying the camouflage, I then masked the wing-mounted radiator on both the top and underside of the upper wing. After that it was time for a coat of Future. Then, it was time for decals! I used the Encore decals for almost everything except the actual a/c serial number. They are very, thin, yet holding together quite well. They are also very well printed with very fine detail.

Note the rigging instruction placard, The Roden decal sheet gives it as a simple white block but the Encore sheet includes much more detail! I added the decal from the Encore sheet which had the script and even a tiny diagram of the aircraft.

I should mention a new toy I received during this build; a Vertigo biplane jig. It was a little scary at first to even assemble the thing but once I began using it, I was sold. It really helped out when getting the top wing installed and also with rigging and final assembly. 

On the Vertigo jig!

I tried out using resin turnbuckles for this build. I used double ended ones which had a very short length of EZ line attached to one end which was glued to holes on the wings and fuselage. Then, a long length of EZ line was glued to the other terminus of the rigging and then fed through the open eyelet. This allowed me to ensure that the turnbuckle was set at a natural looking angle and permitted me to adjust the line for the proper tension. It took some practice but I think it came out well.

The turnbuckles at the wing root.

With the rigging accomplished, it was now time to fix the radiator and fuel line plumbing. The rear radiator pipe was in a hard to reach spot and it took a couple of tries to get it located. The forward radiator pipe was two pieces which required a little finesse to set properly. The fuel line on the port side turned out to be the easiest part to install!

I was now approaching the home stretch of this build! I installed the control cables on the tail and on the ailerons. Then the final challenge; the landing gear! Always a challenge to get these strong enough to support the model! Strangely enough, my first hiccup was with the tail skid! It was hard to find a good attachment to the tail. Eventually, and with a little super glue, I was able to fix it into place...

Rudder and elevator control lines fixed!

Finally, I carefully installed the pre-assembled gear onto the fuselage using a combination of Tamiya Extra Thin cement and super glue. I then installed the rigging wires to give a little more support. The result seemed sturdy enough. Still a little wobble but more stable than on my Albatros!

Installing the landing gear, again the Vertigo jig proved very handy!

Landing gear installed!

Finally, I did a little paint touch up here and there and called it a day! This build went pretty well except for my problems with the motor and lower wing alignment. I think those two items are probably my mistakes. At any rate, I was able to correct them, or at least hide them well enough to make a decent looking model!

Here are some shots of the completed model, thanks for looking.

I have a Squadron/Encore "Blue Max" Pfalz in the stash. Looking it over I believe I will be able to convert it into a Pfalz D.IIIa model by using the parts given in that kit. The only scratch building needed will be for the horizontal stabilizer. So, there's a future project!