The Tamiya 1/48 Dewoitine D-520
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| Randy Colvin |
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Photo: Randy Colvin |
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The Tamiya 1/48 D-520 was kind of a shock when I first heard about it and I was thinking at the time that of all the aircraft kits they could have done, why did they decide to do a D-520? Well I bought one anyways, just because I didn't think I had enough French aircraft in my unbuilt collection, and a few weeks ago a friend of mine gave me another one, that he had started and then decided he didn't want to build it, and since I had just finished my Spit I decided to start work on both of them at once, which I normally don't do.
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I already had the LTD D-520 which came with markings for two French versions and one Bulgarian version. One of the French versions had invasion stripes on it and that has always been the one I wanted to do, so I decided to use the LTD markings on the Tamiya kit and do both the French D-day version and the Bulgarian version.
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Because I had two kits and I was doing different versions I had to look up two different types of reference. The French version was in the typical Dark Green, Dark Brown, Dark Blue-Gray over Light Blue-Gray, only this aircraft also had mottling of Brown and Green over the Dark Blue-Gray on the sides, along with thinner than normal invasion stripes.
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The Bulgarian version had RLM 74, 75, 76 just like a German fighter and since I couldn't find any info on Bulgarian aircraft I decided to treat it like an Me-109 as far as painting it went.
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Construction:
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The First step is the cockpit and it is really nice except for the seat. It has a framed back rest and it is covered in cloth with the corners exposed, Tamiya molded it all solid so I cut off the corners and replaced this area with wire so you could see through the corners of the seat, the rest of the cockpit looked okay even though I didn't have much in the way of cockpit photos.
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Tamiya says to paint the interior Dark Gray and LTD says to paint it Midnight Blue. I decided to use the Dark Gray as it seemed more appropriate for a French plane, but I could be wrong and I used RLM 66 on the Bulgarian version. The cockpit went together very well with no flaws and the only thing I had to add were seat belts from the spares box. The instrument panel was painted black and I used the Tamiya kit decals for the instruments and they also went on with no flaws and centered right over the bezels.
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The next step for me was the fuselage and wings and here I used no filler, except were the wings met the fuselage behind the trailing edges on the belly, and after sanding and rescribing the lines it all looked good. The flaps also went together with no flaws and I fit them in the down position.
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After mating the wings to the fuselage and adding the horizontal stabilizers, mast, pitot tube, windscreen and side windows to both aircraft I was ready to paint.
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Painting and markings:
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I applied the usual RLM 74, 75, 76 scheme to the Bulgarian version and used RLM 02 in the wheel wells and the inside of the wheel covers. I used RLM 70 on the wheels. On the French version I used Model Masters Dark green, Dark brown and I mixed the Dark blue-gray and Light blue-gray for the undersides. The LTD kit said the wheel wells were a creme color so I decided to go ahead and do this as I had very little info on French aircraft. The wheel struts are silver.
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The decals I used were out of the LTD kit and all the red areas on the decals seemed a little thick and they were about the only parts I had to make lay in the panel lines, everything else went very smoothly.
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The final steps were adding the canopy, the radio wires and the weathering and finally a flat coat, all weathering was done using an airbrush except exhaust stains and gun soot which was applied using pastels, then for navigation lights I first painted them Humbrol Chrome Silver and then I applied Gunze Clear red and green where they belonged.
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Photo: Randy Colvin
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Conclusion:
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I used True Details wheels to the French version and the kit wheels on the Bulgarian version after sanding the bottoms down a little. I also did something new that I first tried on the Spit and I liked it enough to try it again on the D-520's and I think I will switch to this method permanently as I like the result and it is much easier than my old way. The method is using Gunze Smoke along the panel lines instead of a darker version of the base color like I usually do and the results are a little better and much easier to apply.
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My final comments on this kit are that I really liked them and I've even changed my mind about why Tamiya decided to do such an "off the wall" kit. I now have two French made aircraft in my collection which includes a Bulgarian version and I have no complaints.
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Randy Colvin
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