1/72 Revell Me 262 A-1a

[JonOlsen88]

Here's my Me 262 A-1a

Kit: Revell

Scale: 1/72

 

Replacement parts: the starboard engine is a resin part by CMK. While this part is very nicely detailed, it leaves a sizeable gap at the joint between the engine and wing. To fill in the gap, I used generous amounts of Tamiya putty. After lots of wet sanding, the gap was gradually filled in and smoothed. It took a lot of elbow grease, though!

The canopy is by Rob Taurus. It's very clear and looks great. In contrast, the canopy supplied by the kit is thick, a poor fit, and has no framing.

Scratch-built details: epoxy (wheel bay and interior side-wall components), and thin, transparent hobby wires for the electrical wiring. I also used a spare rod from an academy Me 262 kit. I trimmed this piece with a hobby knife, and glued it next to the canopy tub.

In the Revell kit, the details in the wheel bay and underneath the cockpit tub are great. Unfortunately and inexplicably, however, Revell decided to cover up the wheel wheels!!! Using a sharp hobby knife, I removed the plastic covering up the wheel wells. Next, I did a bit of sanding to smooth out the wheel wells' edges.

Main Paints: Tamiya As-16 Light Grey, As-29 Grey-Green, AS-12 Bare Metal silver, Xf-22 RLM Grey; Model Master (Enamels) RLM 70 & 71

I hand-painted the squiggles on the wings' uppersurface using a very fine, sharp-pointed Tamiya brush (Item 87074). I used enamel Model Master RLM 70 for these dark green squiggles. The original photos of the subject aircraft reveal that these squiggles on the wings were crisp and rather well-delineated. On the other hand, the same photos show that the squiggles on the fuselage were somewhat wider and definitely less well delineated. The squiggles on the fuselage also show two distinct tones, whereas the monotone appearance of the squiggles on the wings suggests the use of one very dark color.

The base color for the wings is Tamiya AS-29 Grey-Green. The fuselage base color is AS-16 light grey. The squiggles on the fuselage consist of the Model Master paints for RLM 70 &71.

For the fuselage squiggles, I traced the outlines on thin notecards. I then cut around the outlines with a hobby knife. In this way, I used pieces of notecard as templates. I taped the templates onto the fuselage with bits of Tamiya masking tape before spraying the relevant areas with the airbrush. This process was very time-consuming!

Speaking of airbrushes, this was my first experience using one. Some of the squiggles on the fuselage were painted with a very basic Tamiya badger 350 airbrush, while others were painted with Tamiya's Spray Work airbrush. It wasn't until after I had already started the painting process that I upgraded and bought the Tamiya “Spray Work set. Needless to say, I found the Spray Work airbrush to be superior and it gave me much more control when painting.

Decals: A mix of Cutting Edge decals and EagleCals decals. In my experience, EagleCals decals are the best. They are very thin and slide on beautifully. Check out the decal representing the rectangular shaped stencil underneath the windscreen on the port side. I got it from a decal sheet belonging to a Limited Edition hasegawa kit.

Any comments and feedback is much appreciated!


Regards,


Jon

[Shaka HI]

Looks excellent. My only gripe is that the canopy framing is not opaque enough, but overall, it's very nicely detailed and painted and looks bigger than its scale would suggest.

[Hardcore]

Nice!

 

I notice it is a tailsitter  Only way to fix that now is to mount it to a base I suppose. 

[JonOlsen88]

Thank very much guys for your kind words. Yeah, it's a tail-sitter. My next one won't be!

[JonOlsen88]

Hey Marus, I'm working on an Academy 1/72 Me 163S. It's the two-seater trainer version.That'll be my next one! Are you working on anything at the moment?