1/32 Revell Arado Ar-196A-3

Gallery Article by Lorenzo Cassinadri on May 7 2015

 

      

For your viewing pleasure, here are some pictures of my 1/32 Revell Arado Ar-196A-3 that I've recently built for a friend of mine.

This is a very good kit with a small price tag, which is always a plus. The parts fit well and the cockpit, engine and wing folding mechanism are nicely detailed out of the box. The only gripe I have is about the canopy: Revell has, IMHO, unnecessarily broken down the transparents in three parts that must be carefully aligned and glued together to form the right shape. It's a fiddly process, but the locating tabs on the fuselage help a lot. The windshield comes out perfectly as the joints coincide with the frames, but in the other parts of the "glasshouse" the joints are very visible. Ah, I almost forgot the other (minor) gripe: the molded seat harnesses. Take my advice and scrape them off first thing, even two strips of Tamiya tape are better than those "things"! 

I've built the model without aftermarket parts, adding only scratchbuilt details in the cockpit and in the engine compartment. I've also added the riggings for the floats following the notes in Ted Taylor's article that you can find here on ARC, worked like a charm! And, by the way, Ted's article is full of useful tips that helped me along during the construction. 

 

Click on images below to see larger images

I primed the metallic parts of the plane with decanted Tamiya AS-12 Bare Metal Silver, then I preshaded the model with flat black on the upper parts and dark brown on the undersides. Then I painted the model with Humbrol enamels 243 and 244 (RLM72 and 73) and Gunze RLM65 on the undersides. A lightened version of the base colors was sprayed on the panels' center and on the parts in relief on the doped fabric sections to add some variations to the paintscheme.The AS-12 Bare Metal Silver basecoat is tough as nails and allowed me to lightly scratch and scuff the camo to create the wear and tear effects on the floats, fuselage and wings leading edges. After having sprayed the Gunze RLM04 yellow ID markings and the white fuselage band, I handbrushed a couple of coats of Pledge (Future) to improve the adhesion of the decals, especially on the doped fabric parts which have a slightly grainy texture. The decals are from the box except the swastikas that come from the spares. A wash with black/dark brown oils, some postshading with the same dark mixture and some staining here and there basically ended the painting process. After having installed all the small bits, a last protective coat of decanted Valleyo Acrylic Varnish (Satin on metal sections and Matt on fabric areas) wrapped up my work.  

I had great fun building this model. It's an unusual yet interesting subject that comes with a high quality/price ratio and with little effort can really become a showstopper.

I hope you liked it and thanks for looking!  

Lorenzo Cassinadri

Click on images below to see larger images

 

Photos and text © by Lorenzo Cassinadri