Hans

Kev, Perhaps someone here on LSP has a Matchbox kit of the Emil she or he wants to part with for little no cost. It has good outlines, but the panel lines are too wide and deep and take a lot of hard work to fix. I speak from experience Hans

And the main references...

and the fuselage...

The wings..

A small update... can't let Thor do all the hard work.. I have measured up the fuselage and wings using scaled up drawings that come with the Tamiya kit (they are 1:48, very convenient). I compared them with another set of drawings in 1:72, enlarged to 1:32. They were published in the 1946 book "Aircraft of the fighting powers vol. VII" by Owen Thetford. Both drawings are an almost exact match as they should be as for both the real aircraft was measured up (different airframes though). There are some small discrepancies, most notable the engine nacelles on the Tamiya drawing being a bit longer. The reason for this is perhaps the fact that the He 219 airframes were constantly being modified by Ernst Heinkel in order to sell more of them to the Luftwaffe. I noticed that the vacs' wings are off by between 4 and 8 mm chordwise and that the engine nacelle is too wide by 4 mm. The length of the wings is almost spot on. At the moment I have not yet decided how to solve this problem. Cutting the wing from the nacelle an building new nacelles or completely scratch both wings and nacelles. This makes it perhaps easier to build the undercarriage bay and install flaps ans ailerons. The fuselage is too high, some 2 to 3 mm and a bit too short. I have yet to check the airfoil of the wings and the crosssections of the nacelles and fuselage. I spend part of yesterday checking and drawing these on the Tamiya kit using an contour gauge. After enlarging the to the "proper scale' I"ll lay them over the the vac and see what has to be done (or not).

Allok, Sketch no. 5 is the venerable Mongram offering in 1:48. Hans

Kev, The fuselage has the right length, but the proportions seem not quite right. for what it is worth, skizze (sketch) 6 of the attachment illustrates the problem. It comes from an article evaluating the scale fidelity of all available Bf 109E kits back in the seventies. The dotted lines are from the Hasegawa kit. Hope it helps Hans

Hi Thor, Good to see I am not alone . Photos of the Norway based Heinkels seem to exist, but I have never seen one in the flesh. If you are interested, There is a build on Hyperscale of an A-7 of Njgr. 10 in dark green camouflage with hints and tips on modifications to be made to the Tamiya kit (it actually represents an A-2 version, not an A-7) for a correct A-7. As you said the vac is rather crude; the fuselage is too high and the wings are wide chordwise, but as far as I can see nothing that can't be corrected by cutting and gluing. The engine compartment has too big a radius and must be corrected as well. I Have yet to check the airfoil profile of the wings though. I will use the drawings that come with The tamiya kit, along with the kit itself, enlarged to 1:32 scale. I compared these with a set of drawings from Owen Thetford "aircraft of the fighting powers vol. 7 and they an almost perfect match. Hans

Graham, Thank you. I have read Brians' build (or torment, others would perhaps say ) of the ID vac. I am not going to add so much detail. It will be a clean airframe, only the canopy will be open. Hans

Well, let's give it a try! My first vacform

Jeff, Scott Murphy is doing an extensive -and stunning- rebuild of the Hasegawa Hellcat, including the intake openings on the cowling . Part of his build can be found on this forum, the complete build including the part on the cowling is on wright-wing.com. Just Google "Scott Murphy Hellcat" and then go to wright-wing.com. It takes some time to upload though -It's very photointensive. Good luck Hans

Hi all, I also have this kit on the bench. I have had the drawings from the Detail and scale book on the P-51B enlarged to 1:32. I noticed that the profile of the lower part of the nose is spot-on when laid over the drawing. The spinner also has the correct widt at its base and the shape looks o.k. in profile. The dimples on the nose are too deep and to me the supercharger intake under the nose looks too small. I think that the pointy look of the nose arises from the fact that the upper part of the cowling is too circular and is descending too steep towards the spinner. The Hasegawa cowling has a flatter trajectory and is more elliptical and when put on top of the Trumpeter kit this looks much better. A few more points I noticed when examining the kit: The cut-outs for the rear windows are too small on top of the fuselage spine The rear fuselage at the base of the rudder is square where it should be rounded The cutouts for the exhausts don't run parallel with the panel lines on the cowling as they should. The gear doors are incorrect. They are for the P-51D

Mark, The french book "Chasseurs de de nuit de la Luftwaffe" has a photo of this particular aircraft, though it is not the best quality. It shows the Messerschmitt with a scribble pattern on both the fuselage and the wings. The serial on the tail is 1116??. I think I have more info on this aircraft, but I have to do some digging. Hope it helps. Hans

Ironwolf & Radu, Your observations regarding the Revell kit are correct. I have been working on a kitbash of the Revell P-51B and the Hasegawa "D". The project got stalled for obvious reasons, the main one being a lack of references, especially good scale drawings. The shape problems of the Revell kit seem to have arisen (so I 've read) from the fact that the people at Revell Inc. measured up a Mustang that was modified for air racing. Apart from the "problem zones" Radu mentioned the most obvious one is that the wing at the root is too thin chordwise. This is difficult to fix as the leading edge on the wing at the kink also has a very subtle downward slope. Here is a pic of the fuselage. I mated the forward and lower fuselage of the Hasegawa kit to the upper rear part of the Revell fuselage, which is as far as I got. Hans

Brad, The panels on the wings outside the folding mechanism differed from the -5, you 'll have to do some filling and rescribing and there were some differences in the cockpit. If you send me your e-mailadress offline I'll send you scans of drawings I have that show these. Regards, Hans

Hi Matty, Thanks for the tip. I believe my hobbyshop has this book in store. I'll peek into it in the next few weeks or so Best regards and a happy new year to all of you. Hans

Thanks Alan, that is an interesting piece of information. I doubt a lot will be seen of the radio set as the sidewalls of late-war Hellcats were painted flat black. Hans

Thank you Charles Hans

Hi Chris, The colour is a glossy dark blue-grey when new. A few months ago someone who build a Vector R-2800 in the "in the works" section" stated that it was FS 36081. As a match he used Mr. Color laquer # 301. Hans

Hi all, I am currently working on the venerable Hasegawa F6F-5N Hellcat kit. The intention is to finish it as a FAA bird, using the CMK cockpit set. Something that puzzles me though is this; did the FAA use the American pilots' harness or did they replace it with the Sutton harness during the refit of the aircraft with equipment (radio, instruments) of their own? And does anyone know where to find good shots of the ammo hatches on the upper wings? The Hasegawa representation of these is quite wrong. Best regards, Hans

Looks like Jerry Rutmans' resin P-51B is a more accurate option and is only slightly more ($ 0,05) expensive. Hans

Hi Joe, So it seems. Better call my lawyers But seriously, have you finished yours? Any pics the beast? I am still working on mine at a snails pace. I have remodeled the fuselage in front of the cockpit and have done some work on the interior but there is still a lot to do. Maybe I'll post some pics of it at the end of this week or early next week. Hans

Larry, That looks very impressive. Well done! Did you use the Combat Models vacuform of the He 219 as a basis for your model? Hans