Agape forum member Jim Deck (Shutterace) has built Trumpeter’s Fw 200, often called “The Scourge of the Atlantic”. Jim did a great job on the kit,a nd shares his experiences of the build with us. Thanks Jim!
This is the Trumpeter 1/48 scale FW200 C-4 Condor built straight out of the box. I did add the wing brace kit from Nautilus to address the known weakness of the wing on this kit. The wing does not have enough inherit strength to hold the proper dihedral so the brace is necessary. It’s not a real bad kit but does have some gaps and steps.
I used about every filling technique known to man on the wing roots. Styrene shims, glazing putty smoothed with acetone, super glue, more putty and acetone, and finally more super glue. Most of the steps were addressed with super glue. The small stuff was handled with Mr. White Base.
For paint clear parts were dipped in Future and masked with a combination of 1/16” masking tape strips, various widths of Tamiya tape, and PVA glue. If you have good definition as these parts did you can flow the PVA right up to the framing and never even have to trim it.
I first painted the entire airframe with Alclads gray primer. Next went on Model Master RLM 65 Enamel for the undersides. I let that dry overnight and masked it of in prep for the first top color Polly Scale RLM 72 acrylic. Another overnight drying session and I masked off the camouflage pattern for the second color Polly Scale RLM 73. Let me tell you, this thing is big and it ate up a whole lot of my Tamiya tape. I let that dry for about an hour and unmasked it. I don’t like to leave masking on my models any longer than necessary. I believe it increases the risk of lifting the paint from either the adhesive or along the tape edge. Once unmasked I sprayed the bottom with Future, let it dry for 30 minutes, flipped it over and sprayed the top with Future.
About 30 minutes later I was decaling the beast. The decals went on great. I didn’t even need to use any setting solution. Once they were dry I over coated the decals with another coat of Future. FW200 C-4 F8+CS was assigned to 8./KG40 based out of Bordeaux-Merignac, France from 1942 -1944.
This is a huge and impressive model that looks great. Even the interior is pretty complete but you can’t see any of it now. I will admit I did start to get burned out on it toward the end but am happy I finished it. Now I just need to find a place to put it.
