AMT 1/72 Ju-88G-1/6 Nightfighter

 As with most of my kits, construction on this beastie starts with subassemblies. In this case that meant interior, wings, and fin. AMT uses a rather softish plastic which makes for easy removal from sprues and easy gluing, but also makes it easy to damage. Be very careful when cutting it and when applying glue. Too much solvent will easily melt the plastic, especially where the plastic is thin.

The wings and fin glued together with no problems. You do have to remove the attachment points for the underwing dive brakes as the night fighter does not use them. Interior pieces were then assembled and glued together. Once all the bits were in place, the interior and surrounding interior fuselage walls were painted RLM 66 using Testors Model Master enamels. I personally find enamels much easier to work with than acrylics, though they do require the use of solvents that are more harmful. Always wear a quality respirator when spraying these paints.

Once the interior was painted the overall color, various black boxes were painted with Humbrol matte black. The seats have belts molded in. Not very 3-D, but better than nothing. These were painted matte white with silver buckles. Then the interior was dry-bushed with aluminum to bring out the highlights. It was then glued into the fuselage. The clear bits can be left off until the fuselage is complete if you so desire as they insert from the outside. Just make sure you put them in prior to installing the nose cap!

With the interior installed, the fuselage halves were glued together. Fit is fair, but not great. Apparently the aft interior bulkhead is a trifle too wide as there was a gap on the top. Don't forget to install the wing mount in the center fuselage section prior to gluing the fuselage together. Failure to remember will cause you grief later on! With the fuselage glued, several filler applications were needed to smooth things out. Unfortunately, this also wipes out some of the upper fuselage detail.

At this time, I assembled the engines of choice. You can do a radial-engined G-1 or an inline-engined G-6. I chose the latter. The engine cowlings are handed so make sure you get them correct. I etched an 'L' into the inside of the left hand assembly prior to gluing them on the wing. Before you can fit them, the engine nacelles need to be installed.

There are three parts to these nacelles; a left, right and insert. The insert looks as if it should fit with the small rounded part to the aft, but it does not. Frankly, I'm not exactly sure why it is molded that way, but it is. The nacelles don't fit perfectly. Mostly it is due to some interference in the back section. Though I did not, I'd suggest some careful sanding on that are to help improve the fit. Naturally, filler is needed. You will also need to be sure that any sink marks (and there were some) are filled. The natural seam is not the same as the aft gear door seam, so pay attention to this area as well. Fit of the nacelles in the leading wing edge area is also not good. Making it difficult to sand in that area is a small exhaust. On the next similar kit, I'm going to cut those off and glue them back on later as it will make sanding in this area MUCH easier.

With the nacelles done, the engines can be glued on. Fit is absolutely horrible. If you glue them on flush with the mounting surfaces, the engines will point up at about 15-20 degrees. It looks most silly. What I ended up doing, was to glue just the bottom parts of the engine, and then put in shims made of thin styrene strip. This offered a solid bond. The other gaps were filled in several sessions.

Attention was then turned back to the fuselage. The single piece tailplanes were glued in without too much trauma. On my kit, one of them had some depressions that were rather evident. Rather than go through all the work of filling and rescribing them, I placed them facing down so they couldn't be seen without picking up the model. Fit of these was good. The fin was then glued on and it ended up being a bit wider than the mounting area. Out came the filler.

Now back to the wings. With the engines on and smoothed out, the supercharger intakes and flame suppressors were attached. These suppressors were actually circular in shape so you may want to make the proper modifications. As with just about all of the parts, there were small bits of flash on them that had to be removed. I also found that some of the mating surfaces needed sanded down to get the lumps and bumps off them. An easy job considering the soft plastic. I also filled in the bomb rack holes as I could not find images of Ju-88Gs with these racks installed.

Turning my attention to the nose, the small windows were installed. Not that difficult a job, but one that needs careful gluing. When dry, they were masked and the nose cap glued on. Fit of this is fair. By that I mean that it fit well on the bottom, but did not follow the contour of the upper section. It was a bit too small. Nothing that sandpaper and filler can't fix. With that done, the arms for the radar waveguides were glued in place. These fit OK, but not great. They are not keyed and so you just have to glue them in and fiddle with them to get them properly aligned. It can be done, but takes time. In actuality, these need to be airfoil shaped not the round ones provided in the kit.

The canopy was masked at this time and then tacked into place in preparation for painting. Off to the paint shop I went.