` Fw 189 ´ The Italeri Focke-wulf 189-a kit
When Italeri presented this as their new Fockewulf 189, I thought this would be one of the best 189 kits around. It turned out to be either a great disappointment or a great challenge. Looking around the net, I found that this kit was originally released by MPM. It is now put out by Italeri. MPM still put out two other variants of the fw 189.
The Interior. The pilot's seat assembly, prevents the control column from going in, or vise versa. I trimmed a bit from the back of the seat's lug to move the seat back. .
The Fuselage. Each of the fuselage interior parts have two big round lugs that have to be removed. Humbrol 67 was used for the fuselage interior.
After dry fitting the fuselage, I abandoned following the assembly instructions, in order to make it all fit together, because the dry fitting clearly indicated that the interior assembly wont fit inside.
The fuselage doesn't sit very well on the underwing. A gap remains when it is fitted. Now I was able to work on making the interior fit.	Returning to the interior assembly, it was now neccesary to narrow the end by filing, cutting or sanding.
The Fw 189 shape appears After slotting the interior into the fuselage, the wings and booms fit together without noteable problems.
Undercarriage. Here the holes in the wheels are too small or the pins that fit in them are too fat, take your pick. The mudguard glues to the top of the wheel. The undercarriage seems to be a very good fit into the fuselge booms.
The wheel wells and undercarriage assembly was painted RLM02 [ Humbrol 92 ] with bared metal parts painted flat aluminium [ Tamiya XF-16 ].
The instruction sheet indicates the propellors should be glued in. But I made a lug to go on the end of each insertion pin, so they could be rotated into any position desired. There are no radiators behind the cowling, just a big hole, so I used a bit of black card and scored a few lines on it for a radiator.
Undercarriage doors and tail plane undercarriage fitted without any problems. The bomb racks have what appear to be positioning lugs on top of them, but there are no corresponding holes in the wing. The lugs should be removed and the racks fitted flush to the underwing surface.
An additional piece of detail [ the pitot tube ] is added to the wing. Made from a piece of steel wire. The position has been determined with a bit of reckoning, from pictures of the fw 189.
An additional detail can be added to the undercarriage. A brace. This was made with a strip of painted paper.
Another additional detail can be added to the engine cowling. Exhaust pipes. The positioning was determined from pictures. Which appears to be two thirds of the way along the engine cowlings.
Finally the glazing went on. The fit was bad. Quite a bit of sanding back had to be done on the lower rear of the back mid section before it would fit properly. Even after that, I don't think I got it to fit right.
The front upper mid section was a clunky fit and required a bit of filler to blend it into the fuselage. The only bit that fitted without trouble was the conical end bit. And there is still the front bit to go on.
The upper middle section of glazing was slightly protruding at the front. It wasn't overtly visually apparent, but it could be felt with the finger, and it did prevent the front glazing sitting properly. A really cautious bit of sanding back almost got it fixed. Filler will have to fix any remaining gaps and bad alignment. This problem is not unusual on kits, but this was glazing onto glazing.
The overhead instrument panel just did not fit, I evetually got it to fit in a less than satisfactory way. Then at some point during the assembly of the glazing, it fell out. By the time I realised it had, it was too late. If I ever had to build this kit again, I would make my own instrument panel. Then it will fit properly.
Filler had to be used to blend the bits together. Fortunately the 189 had a big bit of framework here. In hindsight, the mid section of glazing needed to be lowered.
Once that was fixed, I tested the strength of the join, and the front glazing popped off. Now I had the chance to put in an instrument panel and add a bit more to the interior.
Two cable loops run from the foot pedals back into the aircraft. These were made from bare wire wrapped around a nail to start the shape.	A yellow handle made with copper wire. The colour yellow is a guess, as the reference image for this is monochrome.
There was also a very small gap in part of the join between front and upper glazing. Rather than continue with trying to fill such a miniscule gap with filler. I took the opportunity to build up the glazing in that area with several layers of PVA glue.
The painting is finished.The decals are next. The Decal sheet covers four aircraft. Three of them are Luftwaffe, the other is Hungarian.
In conclusion... If this is an MPM kit in an Italeri box, it is a rather dubious introduction to MPM. The problems encountered in this kit are not what I would have expected from an Italeri kit. There may be better kits of the Fockewulf 189a around, but with a bit of work beyond mere assembling, a reasonable 1/72 scale fw 189 can be extracted from this kit.

Internet sources used for picture reference material when building this model. Rod's warbirds Luft archive

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