Fw 190 A8/R8 'Red 1' 5.(Sturm)/JG 300 1944

[Xasthur]

Just a little update:

I'm hugely busy at the moment... but I've decided to start back on working on this skin. I can only spare a couple of hours every other week, though, so it will probably be pretty slow progess.

With my fresh eyes I've noticed that the fuselage armor patern I was using was completely wrong, so I've just spent some time re-doing that to come up with a shape that reflects what I have in my photos of the aircraft.

Apparently taking extended breaks from skinning is good for that sort of thing... fresh eye for details.

Anyway, this skin isn't dead and most of the hard work is done.

The fuselage cammo including mottling and dirt is almost completely done and the wings are done.

I just need to get the national markings right and fix up the camo on a few other surfaces... then sort out the visibility of hatches and latches and all that.

It shouldn't be too much more than a month away I think.

[Xasthur]

Just for the benefit of anyone wanting to do a sturmbock, this is what I settled on as an accurate representation of the fuselage armor:

[Hajo]

Archaius....when you do the canopy the front windscreen has what the LW called "blinkers" installed.

Heavy bullit proof glass on the front of windsreen and the two side panels of the same.

Start looks great!

You may be able to show this by making the front canopy frames (3 frames 1 front two sides 1left and 1right)

black and giving them depth.

190A8/R8s had these blinkers installed.

[Xasthur]

The 'blinkers' were interesting.

I'm not sure how one would go about doing them on a skin without making them look awful... There isn't much room to play with the actual 'glass' area of the canopy, is there?

In any case, Klaus had the blinkers removed from his aircraft so I hadn't planned on including them.

Most of the photos I have of the JG 300 aircraft show them sans blinkers.

The cockpit armor was definitely there, though.

Cheers mate.

[Serenity]

Archaius....when you do the canopy the front windscreen has what the LW called "blinkers" installed.

Heavy bullit proof glass on the front of windsreen and the two side panels of the same.

Start looks great!

You may be able to show this by making the front canopy frames (3 frames 1 front two sides 1left and 1right)

black and giving them depth.

190A8/R8s had these blinkers installed.

Do you suppose you could find an image of these? I am curious as to what they look like!

[AWwrgwy]

Do you suppose you could find an image of these? I am curious as to what they look like!

It's just extra panels of armored glass on the canopy.

Model stuff:




Real thing:



Often "deleted" for visibility reasons, i believe.



wrongway

[Xasthur]

It's just extra panels of armored glass on the canopy.

Model stuff:

(Image removed from quote.)
(Image removed from quote.)

Real thing:

(Image removed from quote.)

Often "deleted" for visibility reasons, i believe.



wrongway

Spot on, good images.

The 'Blinkers' are the panels that mounted onto the side of the canopy. The gap between the armored glass panels and the actual canopy had a tendency to ice up and essentially limit the visibility of a Sturmbock pilot to directly in front and directly above.

Combined with the weight penalty the advantages of the extra protection were not seen to worth the visibility and performance loss.

Many also removed the armor plates that were mounted to the fuselage too.

The cowling MGs were removed in an effort to offset the weight penalty of the extra metal but even then, when faced with marauding P-51s, the A8 pilots often ditched as much as they could in order to lighten up.

Serenity, if you're looking for a book on this Osprey's 'Luftwaffe Sturmgruppen' by John Weal is a delightful read. Easy read, great photos, good information.

[Xasthur]

I've successfully completed my studies, so now I return to the world of full-time work and having some free time!  

I have resumed work on this Fw 190 skin and should have it done shortly.

I haven't really felt the itch to play too much... I think I'm going to need to upgrade my machine to play with level of graphics that I was used to anyway... so in the mean time... I'll be resuming work on the skins.

I want to revisit my 109K4 skins, I've already submitted a different material file for Yellow 1 (the current file over-exposes the colours a la NrRaven's skins)



And I'm not really happy with this one either:




So I'll have my hands full with these before I move onto the Ta 152 I've also begun work on.