1/48
Revell Junkers Ju52 |
Gallery Article by Björn
Bäcklund
on
June 6 2014
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Sweden
National Day
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The
Revell 1/48 Ju52 is close to out of the box. I just added a wheel in the tail
and a P&W Wasp central engine. As I only build in 1/72 this plane is huge.
It hardly fits in the paint box and it is to big for my photo table. Handling it
while building without knocking things of the table is hard. But I enjoyed this
kit. A very nice kit to build and it was nice to build an civilian Ju52 without the
need for extensive conversions. I have wanted to build the Revell 1/48 Ju52 as a
Swedish one but the engine installations on those planes hindered me. One option
has been SE-AER and SE-AES who had the angled wing engines. Then I would only
need new P&W engines and new long and straight engine cowling's instead of
the tapered ones used by Junkers. But a question by Rob on a Swedish forum about
propellers on ABA's Junkers gave me another piece in the puzzle of the Swedish
Junkers. The answer he got was this: "When ABA ordered SE-AFA/B/C/D they
wanted the engines located parallel to the body, unlike Junkers standard 6
degree outwardly angled engines. Finally Junkers agreed on such an installation.
However, they could not keep delivery times. As a compromise SE-AFA/B/C was
delivered in autumn 1936 with Junkers standard wings with BMW engines and
propellers from Jfa (Junker propellers), probably 3-blade. Centre engine was the
P&W type ABA ordered with Hamilton Standard propeller. Wings and wing
engines were leased from Junkers. During 1937 they gradually were flown down to
Dessau and got "new" wings with parallel mounted P&W engines and
Hamilton Standard propellers. The last individual, SE-AFD delivered April 30,
1937 was already built according to the ABA's specification" With this
information that the BMW engines were used I had a look at the few pictures I
have of the planes before they were re-engined and I now saw that the wing
engine had the slotted front plate that is seen on BMW engines but the centre
engine didn't have this. So now I only needed one new engine but still three new
cowling's. One thing puzzled me though. On the picture the engines was running
and I could see three blades on the centre prop but I could only see two on the
wing engines. It could of course be hard to tell with the engines running. Then
I looked at another picture and there it was two blades on the wing engine and
three on the centre one. On this picture the engines wasn't running so no
mistake here. But this picture gave me a pleasant surprise. The cowling's on the
wing engines were of the tapered Junkers type. Now I was down to only one
P&W engine and one new cowling. As I figured that the odds would not get
better I decided to start on the kit.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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Instead of hunting down a new engine I decided to cheat. I took the BMW engine and then I cut the front off a Monogram DC-3 engine and put that on the BMW. Next I added push rods and when I had painted it I added ignition cords. For a new cowling I started with a metal tube. On this I glued three layers of plastic card to get a plastic tube of desired diameter. Some plastic strips in the front to make a flange before sanding the whole thing.