EPinniger

This is certainly a great idea for a GB! Unfortunately I can't join - I've only had 2 GB entries so far, both of which I actually completed! Hopefully I'll be able to do something for the next one - what about World War 1 for a subject?

Overall, I'm very pleased with the finished model; the Revell kit builds a great model OOB and even if I weren't building this for the Box Stock GB, I still don't think I'd have added anything extra, whether aftermarket or scratchbuilt!

Here's the finished article! I completed it a couple of days ago, but only got round to taking the photos today (just in time for the deadline) It's unlikely any He162s were in operational service long enough to get much noticeable weathering, so unless you're building a post-war Allied evaluation aircraft, worn, chipped and faded paint wouldn't look right. However, these aircraft were operating in less than ideal conditions, probably with limited time and resources for maintenance, and most likely weren't painted and finished to a particularly good standard. So I decided to go for a slightly grimy, shabby look, with minimal paint wear and exhaust marks, to represent a fairly new aircraft which had been operating in rough conditions without much maintenance. I don't know how accurate this is but I like the finished look! I used a thin black oil wash to highlight the panel lines; this gave just enough visual "texture" to the airframe to give a convincing appearance. I added light soot marks around the jet exhaust and also drybrushed the same colour very lightly in streaks running back from the leading edges of the wings and fins. Finally, I used a silver pencil to add some very small paint chips around the cockpit edge, fuel caps, and a few panel edges.

Decals in place. All of the decals (including the red markers on the trim tabs) went on flawlessly with no silvering. The varnish (supposedly matt) will require retouching around the wing crosses. Weathering is the next and final step in the build.

Detail painting complete and ready for decals + weathering! The nose stripes were painted after applying the decals as demarcation lines. I've also fitted the nose pitot tube.

The kit includes 3 decal options, I picked an aircraft of 3/JG1 "Oesau" flown by Emil Demuth. This has a red/white/black striped nose which will be a tricky job to paint even with the decal strips included! (I've never had much success trying to mask tapering shapes like this) Revell's paint scheme shows the engine painted in RLM 81, but after reading through some magazine articles it looks like the whole upper airframe of this aircraft was RLM 82. Here are a couple of photos showing the first stage of painting. I used Lifecolor RLM78 and Revell Greenish Grey acrylics for the 2 main colours. The engine intake is painted white as a base coat for yellow, and the nose is roughly painted white - I'll retouch it when the decal demarcation lines for the stripes are in place. If the colours look too light it's probably because they're "washed out" by poor lighting - I'll take some decent-quality photos when the model is complete!

The He162 is now complete and ready for painting. The nose pitot tube has been replaced with one scratchbuilt from metal tube + wire. I hope this is OK - the new part is dimensionally near-identical to the original and didn't take any longer to make than it would have taken to clean up the plastic kit part - but it's a lot less fragile and vulnerable to damage! In fact I haven't glued it in place yet, so it can be temporarily removed when I paint the airframe. I've already painted the first coat of RLM 78 so will post another update soon! Just for fun, here's a "SSP" - in a very small scale! - which I've recently finished. It's a Curtiss SOC Seagull in 1/350 scale, from Trumpeter's 1/350 cruiser USS San Francisco kit. The kit has two of these in the box - I built one to put on the ship, OOB other than a PE propeller, and this one as a standalone model. It has scratchbuilt wing struts, styrene rod depth charges on racks made from PE scrap, and a PE machinegun in the hollowed-out rear cockpit.

One of the gun bays has a removable cover, with the interior detail represented by a single-piece moulded insert. Again, not having any photos I don't know how accurate it is, but it looks fairly good when painted. It can be displayed permanently open with a strut holding the cover in place, but the cover "push-fits" if you're careful not to sand the edges too much, so this is what I did. The 20mm gun barrels have been drilled out. The gun ports in the fuselage also needed a bit of opening up with a needle file to allow the barrels to fit. The wheel bay covers are also in place. The covers for the main wheel bay are a bit tricky, they won't stay in place unless the supporting struts are positioned exactly right. The engine covers seem to have been designed to be displayed in the open position. Assembling them closed requires a bit of careful sanding to get them to fit properly. I decided to have one side glued in place and the other "push-fit" and removable so that the engine detail isn't permanently hidden. The final addition to the cockpit (other than the canopy!) is the gunsight. This is a clear moulded part, I painted everything except the sight reticle itself.

I don't think I've posted in this thread before, but your scratchbuilding work is amazing! It just shows what can be done with skill, styrene and spares-box parts. Great work!

Sorry - I assumed from the above that adding belts + buckles was allowed! Not being a major user of aftermarket parts anyway, I probably wouldn't have bothered with them (the kit has half-decent moulded belts on the seat) but as I'd got the Eduard PE set cheap I wanted to try it out; this is the first time I've actually used PE belts on a 1/32 build, rather than scratchbuilt ones made from tape and styrene bits. The only "aftermarket" parts I'm intending to use in the build are the belts and a couple of swastika decals from the spares box (the kit sheet doesn't have any). I had also thought of replacing the nose pitot tube and under-fuselage aerial with a couple of bits of wire, as the plastic parts look extremely fragile. Is this allowed under the third rule? Anyway, here's my current progress: Once the interior is painted, everything goes together very quickly. The parts fit extremely well - I only needed to use a tiny amount of filler, mostly around the nose and lower forward fuselage. The wing and tailplane joins are designed so that they don't need any bracing/clamping to keep them at the correct angle whilst the glue sets. The only "weak point" of the kit - in more ways than one - is the main undercarriage legs; firstly, it's a tricky job getting the legs at the right angle (despite there being two attachment pegs on each one) and there aren't any profile drawings in the instructions to show the correct angle. Secondly, the join between the wheels and legs is very weak; the peg holding the wheels on will twist off unless handled very carefully. I ended up clamping and gluing the wheels to the legs so that they are glued to the tyre as well as the wheel hub, which gives a much stronger join but also results in the wheels being at slightly the wrong angle. A better approach would have been to replace the flimsy plastic peg with a brass one; with hindsight this is probably what I should have done in the first place. The engine. I used various build articles in modelling magazines as reference for painting, as I didn't have any photos of the real thing. According to reviews this isn't very accurate or detailed - but it looks pretty good to me. I used various drybrushed metallic paints on a matt black basecoat, followed by an oil wash in some areas.

PE seatbelts (Eduard) added. These are annoyingly tricky to assemble as they are made up of about a dozen tiny parts, but look nice when finished (pre-painted belts with metal buckles and clips) and are fairly inexpensive. I've also added the several small decals which need to be applied to the cockpit interior before fitting the fuselage halves together. I moved the nose wheel well to the same side as the seat, as it's it almost impossible to fit the fuselage halves together when they are glued on seperate sides (don't know why I didn't do this in the first place) The undercarriage legs and wheels, painted and washed (a small amount of weathering will be added later to the tyres + lower part of the legs) The main wheel well, like the cockpit, has a lot of detail which just needs painting + washing to bring out. I couldn't find any photographic references for this area so just guessed on the colour of the wiring + other parts.

Thanks for the kind words. Hopefully this won't be the last aircraft I build from this era! It's a shame there's nothing RAF from this period though (other than vacform and possibly resin kits) - the Matchbox Tiger Moth is about as close as you get. I have all 4 of the Pyro/Inpact 1/48 kits (Fury, Bulldog, Flycatcher + Gladiator)

The cockpit interior is painted, then given a black wash followed by a dry-brush of lighter grey to bring out the detail. Actual weathering (which I added later) is restricted to a bit of scuffed paint on the seat and rudder pedals, as I don't think any He162s (other than the captured ones evaluated by the Allies?) would have been in service long enough to get much weathering. I used Revell acrylic "Mouse Grey" to represent RLM 02 (a fairly close match) and "Gunship Grey" for RLM 66; the latter is a bit lighter than it should be (Revell "Tank Grey" is a closer match) but I decided on a lighter colour to make the rather small + cramped cockpit interior more visible. Detail painting added. I found a build article in a copy of "Model Airplane International" with photos of the interior of the He162 preserved in the US National Air & Space Museum, which I used for colour reference. Some of the colours are surprising, such as the red panels and blue markings on the control (undercarriage lever?) on the right-hand sidewall. I couldn't find any photos of the instrument panel, but from looking at other built models, it appears that it was RLM 02 with the instruments in black. The assembled engine. Painting this will be a tricky job!

Closeups: Finally, here's a photo showing the BF2C-1 along with my other 2 completed 1/32 1930s aircraft, a Boeing F4 and a P-26. The F4 isn't really up to the standard of the other two, being built a few years ago, and the paint colours aren't very accurate, but I have another F4 kit in the stash which I'll build to a better standard one day (along with a P-12, Curtiss Sparrowhawk and Grumman F3F!)

It's taken rather longer than I thought, but the Curtiss BF2C-1 Hawk is FINALLY completed! (The radio aerial, added since the last update is made from very fine tinned copper fuse wire) Overall views: