Looking at my build page, I see that this is the third time I've built this kit. I have a Cutting Edge conversion set to make this kit into an A-5, A-6, A-7 or A-8, and had planned to use it on this kit, but I chickened out and built it OOTB. (I'm assuming the Cutting Edge set was released before Tamiya put out the A-8 kit.)

Having built several Tamiya 190's, there were no issues in assembly. I have read that the Tamiya 190's suffer from too-small wheels, so I used a set from Hasegawa's Fw 190A-3. I've FUBARed two of the Hasegawa kits, and they have both sets of wheels in them.

Priming was done with a mix of regular Tamiya paint, XF-19 Sky Grey and XF-2 Flat White, mixed 1:1. I wanted to try Tamiya paint thinned with automotive lacquer thinner - it did not go very well, as it was very rough. I decided to do a subject from Aeromaster 48-221 Hungarian Air Force Part 2. I thought the yellow on the rear section was quite striking. I used AMMO Gold Yellow RLM 04, sprayed right from the bottle. The bottom was my mix of RLM 76, namely XF-23 Light Blue and XF-2 Flat White, mixed 1:1. The top was XF-54 Dark Sea Grey to represent RLM 75 and XF-61 Dark Green to represent RLM 82. All the Tamiya paints were thinned with 99% isopropyl alcohol, which was something else I wanted to try. That worked much better than the automotive lacquer thinner.

I did not even try to apply the spiral on the spinner, as I always mess those up.

I made a mask for the canopy using my Silhouette Portrait vinyl cutter. I did break the SVG file into the windscreen and the two main canopies, flat and blown - click on the links to view or download the SVG files.

Page last updated September 16, 2026.