The Gotha

[RAGIII]

Awesome Modeling Continues!
RAGIII

[GazzaS]

Man, I like the looks of that!

GAz

[krow113]

RIII & Gaz;
Thank you.

 Work on the engine continues.
And to really make your WNW kit shine the detail painting will need to be as good as you can.
Mag HV lead training has helped with the handling of the smallish parts and facilitated the installation of  a 1/12 car p/e tie wrap. You can see they have been taped to the tube to help the needed curve happen.
 The mags start gain credibility with multiple detail colors added and the first of prolly a high number of engine wash' applied:


The mags still need some work , still in primary stages of finish.

 Left and right shots show the primary colors nearly complete:



 HV leads have been painted a medium grey acrylic , this may have been a mistake , we'll see.

[krow113]

Found some time to do a little detail painting.
The  decompressor handle and the brass parts get some touch up. As wll as the plugs getting white and a dab of silver.
Also the hardware was detailed with burnt umber , as I think the nuts and bolts might have a parkerized finish , which leaves the metal with a dirty brown color:

Plug wires not attached yet.

[krow113]

 More work done.

 Beginning with the mag mounting, as much 'training' as there was , there is inherent springiness in the chosem HV wire material. So I chose to pin the backs of the mags:

Yoou might also see some screw detail added with an MDC rivit tool.
Then a hole drilled through:

And one mag mounted:

HV wires cut and attached finally:



 Hate the look of it at this stage , almost cartoonish without the wash' to define detail and tie it all together.
Thanks for lookin'.

[lcarroll]

   Nothing "cartoonish" here in my opinion Steve, it's looking mighty fine! Having just finished a wrestling match with plug wires on the Benz IV for my LVG and now in the midst of a bit of a struggle with the mags and their wire arrays I can certainly say I really admire your results to this stage. Great work and I'll continue to follow your progress carefully.
Cheers,
Lance

[Manni]

Top work. The engine looks great with all the pipes and wires. And as you have mentioned: with some washes and a bit oil it will be a stunner.
Bye,
Manni

[krow113]

Thanks Lance & Manni.

 So here is the engine in final colors. The HV leads worked out well enough:




 At this point the primary engine colors will have to do. I have other models to finish for the show this year. The work here was to get through the Taurus bits and show a way to do that. That's been accomplished and a lot of extra work was done as well.
In place:

 So The Gotha will again get packed away , returning in late November

Thanks for the comments and looking in.

[GB]

Looking forward to its return 

Gary

[aliluke]

Ditto to that!!! 

Cheers
Alistair

[krow113]

Thanks Gary and Alistair.
 And since these just arrived ,I'll leave you with them.
They are a set of ALPS printed decals for he Gotha. There are Gothania tire logo's in 2 sizes , LVG weight tables and manufacturer labels with extra serial numbers , as well as some stencils that are prolly some of the first ever applied to war aircraft.
The black is what is printed in white:



All worked up from various pics.

[krow113]

The end of November creeps up...
 
 Returning as promised I reviewed the work to date and the instructions. Continuing with the engine compartment areas I cut and assembled the kit exhaust , and prepared the forward struts:

I like to stabilize the struts , gluing them to sticks for easier handling and painting.
As far as the exhaust goes , I 've seen the metal ones and they look exactly like the kit ones so I'm not convinced of the advantage there. I also thought about the night bomber exhaust ,so perfectly described in the reference material , but not really any better looking than the kit supplied manifolds. So I'll stick with the kit supplied, and see how good I can get them to look.
Seeing all of the work going on inspired me to get back into The Big G.

[Dekenba1]

The engine in particular looks astoundingly good.

[krow113]

Thanks Dekenba1
 Exhaust manifolds get some detail in the form of cool Archer Micro Weld Beads . Took some time to get the resin decals to conform , I wet them as usual and then went to fast dry thin plastic glue to complete the wrapped welds:



Reading about the construction of the manifolds , and my fabrication experience helped me to place the weld beads as realistically as possible.

[RAGIII]

Great to see you back on this one! Plugs and wiring look terrific. Nice start on the exhaust.
RAGIII