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Messerschmitts of North Africa: Bf-110E-2 and Bf-109F-4 Trop


ChuckD

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Hi, everyone.  Back with another update.  I asked my wife earlier this week if I could have a modeling day this weekend, since I hadn't had much in the way of bench time.  Happily, she was cool with it, so I started around 8am this morning and worked on and off - mostly on - throughout the day today until now.  That said, I was able to make quite a bit of progress.  

 

After a grand total of 31.3 labor hours, here is the current state of affairs:

 

YiUUY1r.jpg

Cockpit is lightly weathered and dusted, fuse is together, HGW seatbelts are done, canopies are masked (not pictured), and I've gotten the landing gear together.  I've just started dabbling in the cowlings and I'm pretty sure I see now why they're the widely regarded as weak spot of this kit.  The directions essentially show you just putting them around the engine and being good to go... but there's no way to locate them that way, so I'm going to have to cobble them together very very slowly and carefully to ensure they fit correctly.  If I come up with a good way, I'll be sure to share for posterity's sake.

 

Anyway, here are a few in progress pics from today:

EP3c670.jpg

This is after the cockpit had been weathered and shaded w/oils and the seatbelts completed.  When I bought the HGW seatbelts, I had no idea that building them would entail you actually building little seatbelts.  They're pretty awesome.  I got a little heavy with the wash on the pilot's belts, so there's that.

 

Side panels

fAtdGe4.jpg

 

IP w/reflector glass.  This makes the whole thing look glossy, but it's not.  I did drop some future in the gauges just to give them some gloss effect.

diLDC9Z.jpg

 

Seatbelts!  Pedal straps are tamiya tape painted brown.

rhAHt0R.jpg

 

XTKeqQ0.jpg

 

bjflVIG.jpg

 

Snm86dI.jpg

 

Fuse closed up.  These two shots show the pigment dusting I used to put some dust inside the beast.  It is in Africa after all.  I'm going to model it with the pilot's canopy open and the gunner's canopy closed, so a lot of this should still be pretty visible once it's all said and done.

0nDQ5G5.jpg

 

aUxr97m.jpg

 

I'm going to let the fuselage joins harden for a day, then go at cleaning them.  I may have to rescribe a few things, but overall the fit has been great.  I've decided to just close the cowls and abandon my idea of leaving one open.  

 

That's all for today.  Hopefully I'll have another update or two this week as I plug through the cowls and clean up join lines.  Thanks for following along.

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Gewehr 43,

That is some really nice work you've done.
If you're are bothered the 20mm drums may have had a white band around them if the rounds loaded in them were MG-FF/M.
The M suffix denotes mine shells( More explosive charge). The 110 used both but I'm not sure of sub type versus dateline for the110E.
FYI.
 

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Straight future, Bill. After flat coating with Liquitex matte varnish, I got a little straight future on a brush and dropped it into the dial faces. Since the dials were so well-molded, they contained the future like little basins.  That allowed for a nice clear gloss/glassy finish for the instruments.

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Straight future, Bill. After flat coating with Liquitex matte varnish, I got a little straight future on a brush and dropped it into the dial faces. Since the dials were so well-molded, they contained the future like little basins.  That allowed for a nice clear gloss/glassy finish for the instruments.

Nice tip!

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Straight future, Bill. After flat coating with Liquitex matte varnish, I got a little straight future on a brush and dropped it into the dial faces. Since the dials were so well-molded, they contained the future like little basins. That allowed for a nice clear gloss/glassy finish for the instruments.

I'm gonna try this on my next project. I usually use Testors clear parts glue on the gauge openings, but there are often bubbles and can make the panel sandwich too thick.

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