The Focke-Wulf FW 190 fighter appeared in combat a few years after the beginning of World War II, not long after RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires decided the outcome of the Battle of Britain against the Luftwaffe’s Messerschmitts. The Spitfire Mk 5 was developed specifically to deal with the 190’s when they began to appear. I created this model for a friend by stripping a plastic-covered ARF model and rebuilding it using traditional techniques.
This FW 190 A-3 began life as an ARF (Almost Ready to Fly) model built of balsa and plywood and covered with plastic film and intended for glow engine power. At the request of my good friend Darrin Anderson I stripped the stock model down to bare balsa, made some structural changes to improve scaled fidelity, converted the model to use brushless outrunner electric power, and then recovered and refinished it using Stits Lite products throughout the process. ( Check out http://www.stits.com/ for comprehensive info on my all-time favorite model airplane covering and finishing products.) The project was intended to serve as the basis of an article on “Scaling Out” ARF models for one of the magazines for which I write, but the entire product line of which the 190 was a part disappeared from the market without notice. We decided not to mess with readers’ minds by featuring a product they could no longer buy, and I never completed the write-up part of the project. However, all the perfectly good photo images I had planned to use were sitting there in my files waiting to be put to use, so I have included them here without captions.
