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Pica FW190D-9 Conversion to TA152H
Article by Delbert Leisure Jr

Part 3 - The Fuselage

Please mail any questions, suggestions or comments to Delbert Leisure, Jr., Director.


 
Time to fit the body to the wings. If you haven't built the body yet, the proceed to build it, but leave the tail feathers and supercharger off. Mount the wing pin in the front leading edge, and mount the wing blocks on the trailing edge where the wing bolts are at. I used carpenters glue and made fillets on all glue joints. Keep it thin and it will help reinforce the rib to sheeting joints [brown stains on wing skin]. I mounted the Flap rails to mount the Flap servos on 1 bay outboard of the main landing gear. I also mounted the aileron rails between W10 and W11.
Here is what she looks like with the wings mounted on the old D9 body. Geeeeee, a long nose with long wings! The new tail is made right off the plans and just setting on the D9. When we start the fuse there a few things we need to do. The Cowl does not have enough exit air, the engine gets hot, flames out, and my this plane is a handful to deadstick. The supercharger needs updated to a TA152H style. The vertical tail needs to be larger and about 2 inches longer. The horizontal stab is broke on this one and will be replaced.
The D9 has a Royal Cockpit Installed and ready for action so I plan to leave it alone. The Colors of the Dash, headrest, and interior floor is not right. The colors should be a Darker Green color. The Canopy is mounted and I didn't want to cut it open to repaint the interior. The 74, 75, 76 exterior colors are wrong and I plan to remove them.
The TA152H were 81, 82, and 76,  81 is a Muddy brown color, while 82 is a bright green color.  I made a template of the decals on tracing paper and set them aside. 
The vertical tail needs to be enlarged. The Horizontal Stab is broke so I cut all of the tail feathers off. I took 5 ply Plywood, 3/32 in, and made a new Stab and rudder. I covered both sides of the stab and rudder with 5/32 Balsa. The new tail is a tab bit heavier than the 1/4 in balsa Old ones, but 10 times stronger and doesn't flex when the controls moves. The Balsa Tail works rather well, but after the age sets in they tend to get soft and flex. Light ply is very hard to work with, but well worth it in this case.
Cut the supercharger off and remove the glue deposits that was left behind. The New Supercharger will be bigger and moved forward of the old location. Remove the spinner, prop, cowl, and engine muffler. Yep the Engine does set upright in the old D9. the engine will set upright in the TA152H. We need to do some maintenance in the engine compartment, and repaint the interior of the cowl. Now the fun really begins if the model was built. Remove all of the paint.
I used a commercial grade of paint stripper.
I brush it on and the three polyurethane colors came right off. Surprise! Like other rebuilt German Aircraft there was 2 more layers of paint.
Originally paint in 70,71,65 with enamel the stripper didn't remove it. I sanded, carved, chopped, whittled and removed about 95 percent of the paint. The Plastic parts just ahead of the Canopy was in good shape so I put a light coat of 81 [Dark Brown] and a light coat of 82 [Light Green]. I am painting Silk Span right on the wood.
Got the new tail built and set it aside. 
I replaced the deck where the Tail feathers will set. After a close inspection and minor repairs I started to recover and repaint the fuse. I like Silk Span, its a little harder to work with than the plastic coatings, and harder than Cloth coverings, but the finished product will be nearly as neat as fiberglass but 1/3 of the weight even if you use super light glass. The first FW190D9 I doped the Silk Span on the wood and painted it. This time I painted it to the wood using the top color.
Mount the Tail feathers using a slow Epoxy.
Add the fillets on each side of the rudder. These filets act like triangle stock and support the rudder.
Apply a light coat of 76 [light blue], put the paper on it, squeegee the excess paint off [I use a paper towel] , touch up the bad spots, let it dry. Cover the rest of the Fuse. Trim off the extra paper, light sand the rough edges, touch up the paint.
While its off you can repaint the cowl or touch it up. Mine is cracked so I plan to redo the fiberglass on the cowl interior and repaint it.
Retrace the decals back on the fuse and repaint the crosses. Add the three yellow triangles for the fuel filler ports. I have chosen a Yellow "1" for this project. I was going to make this plane a green 4 of Stab/JG301. I looked and looked for Documentation on the paint scheme. I found a green 4, yellow 1, and yellow one it is. There a good model on Hyperscale which shows the color pattern on all 4 views, so I copied the pattern for this TA152H. Yep, I had the green and brown reversed, so I reversed the colors.

 

Coming Soon, Part 4 - the finishing touches...

Director:
Asst. Editor/Modelling Resource Center: Delbert Leisure, Jr.
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