1:48 Fw 190A8 (snake)

The Anton A-8 and the muzzles of its weapons

The A-8 version was the most numerous production form of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter and from the spring of 1944 it formed the backbone of the daylight defense of German airspace. Above the engine it had a pair of MG 131 machine guns of 13 mm caliber, in the wing four MG 151 cannons of 20 mm caliber. The suffix in the name refers to the snake finish of a particular machine, which turns the ordinary gray-blue camouflage into a conspicuous individual piece.

When the turned parts are worth having. On this subject, definitely. The machine gun fairings ahead of the cockpit run out into shallow troughs which end at the muzzle of the barrel, and in 1:48 that is a place everybody looks at. Injected plastic puts a blunt stub with no cavity there. A turned tube with an opening brings the difference out even in a photograph taken from a distance, because it is not a matter of shape but of a real shadow inside the opening.

• Two parts for the machine guns above the engine, two for the wing cannons.
• A Pitot tube on the leading edge, the part that breaks off a plastic model most often.
• Two sets of insignia, so both sides of the fuselage and the wings can be covered.

The fitting is short: the plastic stub is snipped off, the remainder is trued and the metal part is glued into the drilled hollow with cyanoacrylate. No sanding of the shape and no filling awaits here; the whole modification takes a few minutes per side. The mask for the inner side of the canopy comes into use only when you leave the cockpit open. Anyone building with the canopy closed will not use half the contents, and that is the only reason why the metal variant does not suit everybody here.