What happens when you mix an Italeri 1/72 Ju-88, Spaghetti and good old Australian modeling skills?. Well take a look for yourself, you would be surprised!.

Text, model and photos by Graham Mahoney from Melbourne, Australia

Well I have decided to do a simple out of the box 1/72nd scale entry for relaxation whilst I was sorting out the wiring harness dramas on another build.

So I found this one that in the stash. Released in the 90’s it has raised panel lines and rivets and a choice of two nice simple Wellenmuster wave pattern camouflage schemes to choose from. What could be easier???………

A quick shot of RLM66 for the cockpit and RLM02 for the wheel wells, with some Nato black for the instruments and a bit of a white wash.

The fuselage was bolted together and the wings and tail planes added.

Throw on a couple of engines and it is starting to look like a Ju-88.

Progressing nicely now, all the major bits are on, a little filling required and sanding to make the fuselage seams disappear but nothing untoward. I did remove the majority of the height of the rivets and the raised panel lines but still left them there.

A primer coat of light grey was applied and then any other joint defects fixed.

Now was time to start practicing the wellenmuster wave camouflage as can be seen very lightly on the tail and fuselage as I was cleaning out after using some interior green on another project….

I had to wait for a set of Canopy masks to arrive as to be quite honest I have chickened out at the thought of masking this one myself ( I think I counted about 85 parts in the mask set)!!

Repeat after me three times….. Eduard masks are your friend

With close to 70 separate glass panels and this being braille scale, they really helped.

A coat of RLM 66 (Gunze H416) for the ‘inside’ of the framing…also showed up some work needing to be done on the fit of the canopy.

And once fixed a coat of RLM 65 (Gunze H67) for the undersides.

Onto the upper surfaces now after masking off the undersides. There seems to be a bit of conjecture as to what the upper surface colours were. The kit callouts are for green and brown, both in completely ‘wrong’ shades, but I have chosen to follow the school of thought that says these planes were finished in standard two tone green splinter upper surfaces and then the brown was applied later.

First colour RLM71 Dark Green (Gunze H64).

Then masked up ready for the next colour – Tamiya tape worked great.

Which was the RLM70 Black Green using Gunze H65.

Masked again and then RLM79 Sandy Brown  – Gunze H66 applied. Again, no real references appear to exist so a bit of artistic license used for the layout.

Then the whole lot oversprayed with very diluted RLM 65 followed by very diluted  US interior Green to try and knock off a bit of the contrast between the colours. There is a small but noticeable difference between the two pictures.

And all ready for the Wellenmuster wave pattern…. Oh the joys of the Wellenmuster – and in 1/72nd !!

Starting off with the underneath, RLM 70 Black green squiggles are applied all over, not looking too shabby and a decent contrast between the colours.

But…….the upper surface was another story. As the RLM65 Light Blue had to be thinned sufficiently for the close in ‘squiggle’ work it came out, well opaque!!

It quickly became obvious that going over the same squiggles to build up a solid colour with the airbrush was going to be an exercise in futility, so it was time to step away from the model and have a think.

I came back and decided to give it a go with a brush.

This proved to be a lot better; at least it looked like the RLM65 was a ‘solid’ colour now.

A bit of touching up was one, both with hairy stick and airbrush and then the whole lot was blown over with very light coats of the two green and the brown in order to blend in the edges a bit. The same was done underneath, with the whole lot misted over with the highly thinned RLM65.

I reckoned with a few more ‘filters’ of thinned camo colour, and then some weathering and an oil paint filter, things would settle down nicely….at least I was hoping that would be the case and I would end up with something that I am happy with as I was not real happy with this as it currently was…….

Moving right on, a few more coats of filters, basically dirty thinners, with the ‘dirt’ ranging from browns through green, yellows and grey, and then it was time for a clear gloss coat before applying the decals. I must say, for kit decals they ‘snuggled’ very well over both the raised and recessed detail as required.

After the decals were applied the under wing crosses were touched up on the dive brakes before another coat of gloss clear. Then I airbrushed on some dark dirt FM wash, mainly to get it into the control surface joints. A coat of matt clear was applied.

Then all the final fit out, adding antenna wire with EZ Line and hanging the bombs underneath and ready for the final pictures.

A thoroughly enjoyable little build of an older kit in a scale I am not used to any more and in a paint scheme I have never attempted before.