Wingnut Wings Gotha GIV slow build

jamo · 28 March 2011, 01:02 AM

Greetings from Wellington, EnZed, home of Wingnut Wings and The Vintage Aviator Ltd.

I have been looking forward to this kit since Wingnut Wings went public a couple of years ago and from the start it featured in the Coming Soon section. For a large model the box is not as large as you might expect, but it is packed with sprues.

I built the 1/72 Roden kit five years ago which was an enjoyable build, challenging in parts, and served to build my interest in these early strategic bombers and the men who flew them

I stocked up then on reference books and particularly recommend 'The Sky on Fire' by Raymond Fredette which is very readable, 'The Gotha Summer' by C M White, 'German Bombers of World War One' by Alex Imrie. More recently there is 'First Blitz' by Neil Hanson, which is also very good. I have also bought the Windsock Datafile Special featuring the build of the WNW kit.

There is quite a bit of preparation involved before starting to build. Wash the parts in soapy warm water, lots of nipping off the sprues and removing mould ejector marks, particularly from the interior of the fuselage. These took quite a bit of patience and effort to completely remove, the ones around the nose being hard to reach. I ended up making a new tool to help with this, on old paintbrush sawn off with a bit of wet n dry glued on the end.

Following the painting guide in the instruction manual, the interior is mostly 'dark wood'. I decided to use Flesh as a base colour for the wood grain, from a Tamiya rattle can. Then I mixed up a dark reddish brown from Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber. I followed the special instructions for doing woodgrain from the WNW website, wiping off most of the oil paint with a clean brush onto a piece of paper, leaving as little as possible.

Here is the wood grain in progress:

The fine details on the kit are quite extraordinary. I loved the circular fuel selector switches, the control wheel and the instrument panel. Just brilliant! Some of the instrument decals are slightly too big, especially the yellow gauge #56 on the left hand console, but this is not hard to remedy. Trim the decal carefully before applying and if necessary use a sharp scalpel after its dried. I use a generous blob of gloss acrylic medium (Mod Podge) on each instrument face which shrinks as it dries into a nice glassy circle. Finish with a protective coat of Future/Klear on the glass.

The instrument panel won't be particularly visible when the model is finished, but I know it's in there

jamo · 28 March 2011, 01:15 AM

The seats are all nicely detailed with realistic folds in the leather. I wanted the photoetched seat belts to drape as realistically as possible, which I think I achieved better on the folding seats than on the pilot's seat. There is still a bit of weathering to be done on these and other parts of the interior.

Everything fits nicely but you need to ensure mating surfaces are scrapped free of paint. The ammo boxes should not be glued to the bulkheads, only to the floor as the bulkheads will probably have to move slightlyto engage with the holes in the fuselage sides when the interior is fitted. Also be careful not to have the ammo boxes leaning back too far, use the bulkheads as a guide.

I didn't bother thinning the bomb fins with a scalpel as Ray Rimell suggested in the Datafile Special as they are not particularly visible.

I wasn't sure what colour to paint the window surrounds on the inside so I asked Richard Alexander from WNW and he sent me this reply:

"Wood is our recommended colour as it was a structural frame to help make up for the rigidity lost by replacing ply with whatever the clear material was.

A close look at the G.V (note that it is a G.V and not a G.IV) cockpit photo HW17 in Windsock modelling Special shows them to be the same colour as the surrounding wooden fuselage."

I loved the detail on the fuselage sides and the neat little liquid oxygen bottles. These need to be carefully drybrushed to bring out the fretted metal cover. They even have little dials on top. Thankyou Wingnut Wings for the thoughtful touches that make so much fun to build.

My plan is to finish this the plane in one of the pale blue options. If Pheon's decals come out in time I'll go for 'K' is I believe this is probably Brandenburg's aircraft (notwithstanding what is in the WNW instruction book) - see the K for Klein thread for a long discussion on this topic. I am working to a longish deadline on this build as the local IMPS club is running a Model Expo in August this year and I want to have it finished in time for that. So I have four months to complete it. I don't like deadline pressure, it takes some of the fun out of it, but I reckon if I do a bit most nights it should be do-able.

Happy Modelling
James

beeza · 28 March 2011, 01:48 AM

In one word - Brilliant.

I have been waiting for someone to do a build log of the Gotha since it's release, I'm so glad it is you James. I will be following this build very closely, your workmanship so far is outstanding, the wood grain is excellent. Looking forward to seeing more progress on this beauty soon.

Des.

Sören · 28 March 2011, 04:18 AM

Hi James, nice build of an interesting plane.

Don´t forget: the fuzes of the P.u.W. bombs are made of brass. They are secured by a pin. These pin is connected with a wire which are fastened on the bomb rack. When the bomb is dropped away the wire should pull the pin. The fins of the bomb are offset. This makes the bomb in the air flow rotate. The fusz is unlocked by this rotation