At the end of my previous post, I’d finally managed to assemble the complicated crew gondola of my aircraft. After that, I finished off masking its many, many windows, and then set about airbrushing the underside in RLM 65 pale blue enamel, and the topside in a splinter pattern of RLM 70/71 greens, all from Sovereign Hobbies.

All surfaces were sealed with a layer of Plastikote gloss, ready for the kit’s relatively small supply of decals.

Then I belatedly turned my attention to the propeller and engine. The Bv 141B’s 14-cylinder BMW 801A engine proved to be its downfall, because these engines were scarce and going to other aircraft The kit’s representation of the engine is half-hearted—just the front seven cylinders, and those undersized. But the engine will be largely concealed by the fan mounted behind the propeller (which, mercifully, the kit has rotating in the correct direction, unlike its rendering of the propeller, which I had to replace).

The fan of exhaust stubs, to be mounted behind the engine cowling, provides sixteen rather randomly positioned exhausts. It’s difficult to be sure from photographs of the real thing, but I believe I count twelve outlets, arrayed in a 2:1:3 pattern on each side, with the 3-cluster set a little higher on the starboard side.

Here’s the kit part, before and after corrective surgery:

After a little painting of the engine parts, it was time to glue all the big bits together and strip off the canopy masks, producing something that (almost) looked like an aeroplane. Here’s the result after a little weathering (dry-brushed silver enamel, LifeColor Liquid Pigment, and some Tamiya powders) sealed with Plastikote matt:

Only a little tidying up was required when I popped off the hatches and upper turret:

(There’s a little flake of paint sitting on the main spar in the photograph above, but I fished it out with a cocktail stick.)

The way the kit parts are configured forces the upper gun to point directly backwards, but that would foul the open hatch, so I did a little surgery and swung the gun around to a half-left position:

I added the Eduard photoetch gun mount to the underside of the turret, with a little bit of styrene strip added to provide the mounting cross-bar, and then slid the final assembly over the gun barrel and into position. Then I sealed the hole in the dome with a little blob of Kristal Klear:

Which I then painted red-brown to emulate the leather weather-seal around the real thing:

The undercarriage went on:

Then I flipped it the right way up to add a final few details, including my little punch-out panel frame, and the open hatches:

Finally, I applied a bit more weathering with Tamiya powders. These aircraft seem to have faded and chipped fairly readily:

But I wanted to emulate the more subtle pattern of fading visible in some photographs:

Here’s the final result: