.

This will be an OOB build as the kit already includes the resin skis.



Don't think I'll need all those landing gear and tire pieces!











Began by painting the cockpit pieces RLM 02 and picking out different components in black.







I thought I would try using oil washes to weather the cockpit this time. I used black, burnt umber, and dark rust (mostly black.)












I like the dirty look it gave to the RLM 02 grey.

I wasn't sure how to drybrush this light grey color to show wear, but I ended up using black and am very happy with how it turned out.




Painted the instrument panel black and drybrushed with light grey (along with a bit of yellow and red) to pick out the gauges.



Added some generic PE seatbelts to liven up the seat a bit.



Here's some shots of the finished panels.









Glued up the fuselage, wings and cowl sections.




The fuselage and the cowling had good fits with only minor seam work needed.







The leading edges on the wing did not have a very even fit and needed a bit more Mr. Surfacer to help fill and level the gaps.




Today's work consisted of sanding the seams and figuring out the best way to mount the wings to the fuselage.

I decided to make it a two step process. The first step was to glue the front and back seams to the fuselage.





Both these seams had a nice tight fit and won't take much clean up work at all.

I am letting these joints glue up firm overnight as I will be putting pressure on them in the second step.

You can see in the picture below, there are large gaps along the wing roots (both sides)



The plan tomorrow is to close the gap by pulling upward on the wingtips and hope that the front and back seams hold tight while everythings glues up solid.

And good points about the dihedral angle. But since I don't have any scale measurements, I'm not worried about accurancy - so long as it doesn't look odd. So I used tape to pull the wingtips up and close the gap and checked it visually and it still looked OK. Plus, it is a lot easier than trying to fill with sheet styrene.

Here's a shot of the before measurement:



Here's the wingtip pulled up and the gaps closed up nicely.





And here is the after measurement:



Fortunately it was not a significant difference.Glued up the underwing spreed brakes, bomb mounts and aileron control arms.



Next began the four hour process of masking the canopies! Unfortunately the canopy rail engravings are so light that they are invisible to see through the tape even when held up to brightest light. And they are so shallow that there is no way to make the cuts by feel. So I had to resort to my Gunze precut 1mm tape strips, my fine tip tweezers and my calipers to measure and cut all the pieces. I wish I had some Eduard mask for this kit!



Next I mounted the nose section to the fuselage and then attached the fixed front and mid canopy sections.



Then it was time for the gear - I mean skis!  They fit very well.







Here is a photo from the Stuka in Action reference book I'm using. It looks like Hasegawa did their research too!




Prepped the kit for priming with the Testors Plastic-prep.




I then primed the resin section with Mr Resin Primer and the rest of the kit with Mr Surfacer 1200 spray.





Then I finished up the weekends work with some preshading.



Hopefully I can finish the painting this week and start thinking about the diorama and figures!

Painted the underside RLM 65 using Lifecolor UA061. I covered the preshading a bit more than I wanted to. Maybe next time I'll preshade a bit darker 



For the top side splinter camo I am using RLM 70 (Lifecolor UA051) and RLM 71 (Lifecolor UA052). I put down the lighter color first.



Next I cut out the paper mask from the instructions and then traced them onto some 40mm tape and applied according to the paint layout instructions.



And then sprayed the darker RLM 71.



I added a bit of post shading by adding a bit of light gull grey to the each color and then applied to the interior of each panel section.

I painted the ID band around the fuselage and the underside wingtips RLM 04 using Lifecolor UA140.

Then I sprayed her with a nice coat of Future and set her off to dry for the day.

Now I have no excuse not to get started on my figures. I am working with my first set of higher quality resin figures. Somehow I don't think that working with better quality figures is going to affect my chances of finishing them to any higher quality

Here are a pair of happy go lucky German grunts having to move barrels around on a cold winter day on the Eastern Front.




Uh Oh!  Who are these guys?? !!

Kind of gives away the plot of my dio!

Lots of folks included in this box, I'll be using some of the ones that are on foot.



Even though both sets of figures state they are 1/48, there is a noticable size difference.



Well, maybe by creating a forced perspective with the dio layout, this size difference can help create the illusion of greater space. 

After applying the decals, it seemed like something was missing. The swastika on the tail. So I picked up a sheet with several different scales.




Decided to go with the Promodellers black wash.











I wanted to simulate the winter wash applied to many aircraft and vehicles. Since a whitewash is not really paint, I didn't want to use regular acrylic paint to apply it. So while browsing through the local craft store, I came across some Tempera poster paint that preschoolers use in their art projects. It is water based and fairly opaque so I gave it a try. I like the way it turned out and probably could have even put it on with a bit more coverage.

A nice thing about using this is it washes/wipes off easy if you want to simulate it wearing off or get some on decals or windows.



Also while at the craft store, I picked up some glass beads to help simulate bulbs behind the clear pieces.

I then promply lost the kit landing light cover piece when it fell into the wing and I couldn't shake it out   Rather than break open the wing to get it out, I cut a new one from the clear plastic "blister pack" that the resin figures came in since it already had a nice curve to it and it molded to curve of the leading edge.




Finished off the Stuka build by attaching all the small bits. Here are a few finished pictures.









Glued up some of the plastic Tamiya Russian figures and gave them a base coat of flat black.



Then did the same with the Master Kits resin figures.



I've done a bit more figure painting and have started working on the base, but the pictures will need to wait to the next update.


After painting the figures with a undercoating of black, I used Vallejo Model Color paints to apply the base colors.




I mixed my flesh highlight color with Future to create a free flowing wash to get into all the facial crevices.




Here is everbody posted for a group photo 





Next, I wanted to create a canopy cover that would be used to keep ice and snow from building up on the canopy while it was parked.

I simply used about 4 layers of facial tissue and a 50/50 mix of Gator Glue and water to saturate the tissue so it could be formed and hardened into the desired shape.

To protect the kit while forming the cover and letting it dry, I covered the affected area with kitchen cling film.



Then I simply shaped the wet tissue into the desired position and allowed it to dry.

 After it was dry, it was removed, trimmed, and painted with Lifecolor Dust to give it the look of canvas.




Next, I layed out the major pieces on the bases and played with locations until I was happy with the scene.




I primarily used the Woodlands Scenic SceneArama line of materials to create the landscape.



Unfortunately, with time running out, I did not have time to take a lot of step by step photos of the problems I ran into with the plaster. So I will just have to describe them.

I wanted to create the snow base in two different parts. The first, a thicker base for the wooded area. This went easily and without problems. The second step was to apply a thinner area where the plane was parked. Here is where I ran into problems. I applied the plaster and then used a damp sponge to smooth it out to make it look like packed snow. I added some tire tracks, footprints, etc. and left it to dry. When I came back several hours later, I discovered the entire layer heaved upward about 1" and created a dome type look. When I tried to press it down, it all simply cracked in dozens of pieces 

To make matters worse, I was out of plaster and is was late Saturday night and my source, Hobby Lobby, was closed on Sunday. Luckily on Sunday, I found another store, Michaels, that was open. So I picked up some more and gave it a second try, this time I thought I would lay it on a bit thicker in hopes of preventing the upheaval and cracking.

Well, it was not to be. This attempt also raised up, but I didn't try to push it back down. My theory now is that the plaster needs to expand slightly when drying. Since the "parking area" was constricted between the hard and dry "wooded area snow" and the wooden frame, it had nowhere to go but up. So this time I had to live with it and hope that the domed appearance didn't distract from the overall look.

Enough about the plaster, the final step was to mix MIG acrylic resin with Tamiya thinner and spray the trees and ground, and then sprinkle the "snow" to give it a powder look. Despite being very fine grains, I think they still appear a bit too larger for scale. Oh well, I will just have to write this all up to lessons learned. Achieving the look of real snow is definitely tougher than I thought and I applaud those who can make it come out right.

Here is the overall shot of the diorama I titled;

The calm....Before the Storm!