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

[ChuckD]

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.

Incidentally, I used future to secure the gunsight reflector glass to the IP. It has decent adhesive properties.

[ChuckD]

Good morning, everyone.  Quick questions for those in the know since I'm to the point where I can put together the bombs and drop tanks:

 

1. Could the 110E-2 carry both bombs and drop tanks at the same time?

2. What colors are the tanks, bomb mounts, and bombs.?  The instructions don't have any color call-outs.  

[ChuckD]

Hi, everyone.  Back with another update.  About 98% of the way through the build.  Had today off and have spent almost the entire day today sanding, filling, sanding, filling, and so on ad nauseum.  I've still got a few things to clean up, but right now, I'm waiting on some glue and some milliput to set, so I thought I'd take a moment to post a few progress photos.  For filling, I've pretty much pulled all the stops.  I've used Mr. Surfacer, Tamiya white putty (first time, not a fan), stretched sprue, milliput, and even small flecks of sprue to fill tiny gaps.  Been an interesting experience.  I loathe rescribing - primarily because I really suck at it - so I've found a good technique of sanding for a few seconds, then sharpening up the panel line with the scriber, then repeating till the join line is gone.  I find that allows me to not dink around with dymo tape or whathaveyou to hold straight lines around curved surfaces.  Not rocket science I guess, but it helped me.  Also, I'm grateful that the 110 doesn't have many panel lines that run around the front of the leading edge.

 

Anyway, yak yak yak, on with the pics.

 

This is as of Thursday night.  Most of the cowlings are dry fit.

 

I said early on that the nacelles are supposedly the weakest part of this kit.  While they fit reasonably well, they are a textbook example of Dragon's theory of "why use one part when 7 (literally) will do?"  Sigh.  

 

Part of my beef here is that a lot of the parts - the main upper and lower cowl - have no positive attach points to the rest of the airframe.  You can see the tabs below for mating them to each other, but when mating them to the rest of the aircraft, you're left to dry fit, pray, and/or invent profanity.  To help alleviate this a bit, I glued a couple strips of plastic card to the inside surfaces to give me something to press against.  It really helped in fitting the lower cowl to the lower wing part, but I'm less convinced it was helpful for the upper cowl.  

 

The nose required a bit of sanding too.  On the right side, the nose cone stood proud of the rest of the fuselage by a pretty significant margin... at least as far as models are concerned.  If I had it to do again, I would've shaved the interior bulkhead down a bit to allow the nose cone to be flexed and glued.  The white crap is Tamiya putty which I tried for the first time and didn't really care for.  It seemed to chip quite often rather than sand smooth.  So, I more or less had to go over the whole section again with Mr Surfacer 500 and sand again.  Oh well.  Each build brings new lessons.

 

Here's how she stands as of this writing.  The tail is glued on, but the wings are still dry fit.  I'm going to finish the cleanup and paint the wheel wells prior to attaching the wings.  Dry fitting looks promising for the wings.  There doesn't appear to be much of a gap anywhere except for at the very forward inboard section of each wing right at the leading edge.  But, that shouldn't be too hard to clean up.

 

Looks rather Bf-110ish, doesn't she? 

 

The right nacelle.  In general, the right side fit better for some reason.  As you can see, some of the cowl panels don't match up perfectly, but I'm not too worried about it.  I'm going to knock the high spots down just a bit, then call it good.  I've been around enough real airplanes to know that cowls don't always fit perfectly.  

 

Left side.

 

Tail assembly.  Once that milliput dries, I'll get some Mr. Surfacer in there to smooth it out a bit.

 

The lower wings with bomb racks attached and holes drilled for the drop tanks.  I'm am not looking forward to the final fit of those.  Their mounting brackets are fiddly as all getout.  1000:1 odds I get thru attaching those without breaking something.

 

A good look at the enlarged oil(?) cooler intakes.  You have to basically remove 3/4 of the lower cowl pieces to fit these, though once you do, they fit pretty well.

 

These last shots show the most problematic area around the uh... cooler ... thingy... on the left wing.  No matter how much I dry fit, adjusted, and tried again, it just would not line up, so I ended up gluing it as best I could, then back filling the area with Mr. Surfacer.  In the end it turned out okay.  The landing light bezel is one of the parts I'm waiting on to dry, so its seams are still pretty ugly.

 

Lower wing

 

Upper wing

 

All in all, there have been a few challenges, but for the most part the fit has been pretty good.  Just a bit more cleanup and masking and I can finally start shooting chemicals at this big dumb thing.  There is no way this thing will fit in my paint booth, so that will be an interesting challenge in its own right.  Thanks for following along.

Edited November 10, 2017 by Gewehr 43

[ChuckD]

If anyone's interested, here are my time tallies (in hours) to date:

 

 

Plan & Prep Labor: 16.05

Build Labor: 21.55

Paint Labor: 10.95

Weathering Labor: 1.90

Total Time: 45.55

Total Modeling Sessions 24.00

Avg Time per Session 1.90

 

Interesting to see that I've spent over a full working week or almost two full days of time building this model since starting on 9/16/17.  Stats are fun. 

Edited November 10, 2017 by Gewehr 43

[monthebiff]

If anyone's interested, here are my time tallies (in hours) to date:

 

 

Plan & Prep Labor: 16.05

Build Labor: 21.55

Paint Labor: 10.95

Weathering Labor: 1.90

Total Time: 45.55

Total Modeling Sessions 24.00

Avg Time per Session 1.90

 

Interesting to see that I've spent over a full working week or almost two full days of time building this model since starting on 9/16/17.  Stats are fun. 

 

I usually spend at least 24 modelling sessions just staring and contemplating what I'm doing next on a build. Nice work and wish I could build that quickly!!

 

Regards. Andy

[Gazzas]

Whoa, I never monitored my model time.  I would hate to see how much of it was spent looking for pics on the net.

 

Nice work, keep it coming!

 

Gaz

[Kagemusha]

It's getting there, looks very much the part.

[Jim Barry]

Lots of nice work. I think I put about 300 hours into my Fury when I tracked it.  For me, my winter building is about 50 hours a month and summer is like 20. 

[Daniel460]

Looking great, really enjoying your informative build thread and all the great pictures! Working on the same kit to covert it to the G-4. The engine nacelles are a pain!

 

Dan

[Thunnus]

Very nice work and detailed presentation!  Oh man... I'm afraid what the numbers would say if I tracked my modeling hours!

[ChuckD]

I usually spend at least 24 modelling sessions just staring and contemplating what I'm doing next on a build. Nice work and wish I could build that quickly!!

 

Regards. Andy

 

Once I'm on the build, I'm usually pretty decisive.  For me, the long hours of idle staring come when I try to figure out what kit to pull out of the stash next. 

 

Whoa, I never monitored my model time.  I would hate to see how much of it was spent looking for pics on the net.

 

Nice work, keep it coming!

 

Gaz

 

Thank you.  Progress is slow, but it's coming along.  It is eye opening to see how much of a time investment this hobby is.  

 

It's getting there, looks very much the part.

 

Thanks!  Starting to shape up nicely.

 

Lots of nice work. I think I put about 300 hours into my Fury when I tracked it.  For me, my winter building is about 50 hours a month and summer is like 20. 

 

I hear ya.  Winter is definitely an up-time for me in terms of modeling.  On average, I don't get much time in a week to build, so all of my builds are slow.  With a full time job, a 6 year old, and several other hobbies my time is limited.  At this rate (~22.5hrs/mo) it would take me 13 months to build your Fury.  This two to three month build for the 110 is trying my limited patience, so kudos to you for pushing thru a 300 hour project.

 

Looking great, really enjoying your informative build thread and all the great pictures! Working on the same kit to covert it to the G-4. The engine nacelles are a pain!

 

Dan

 

YES!  Ugh.  The nacelles stink.  My order of operations was to:

 

1. Attach the rear exhaust fairings to the lower wing root.  Let dry.

2. Attach the rear upper cowl to the upper wing.  Let dry.

3. Attach the lower cowling.  Let dry

4. Attach the forward exhaust fairings.  Let dry.

5. Attach one side of the upper cowl, hold till dry.

6. Attach the other side of the upper cowl, hold till dry.

7. Repeat the whole god-forsaken process on the other wing.

 

Somewhere between steps 3 and 4 is where I put the engine in place.  Good luck on your conversion!  Hope it turns out.

 

Very nice work and detailed presentation!  Oh man... I'm afraid what the numbers would say if I tracked my modeling hours!

 

Right!  It's a very interesting thing to track.  I'm not a statistician by any stretch, but my professional world is built around business process improvement, metrics gathering, and data analysis.  I spend most of my days tracking processes to gather data used to improve them.  Tracking my time spent on this kit is a natural extension of that professional workflow.

 

What's *really* interesting is to attach a cost to those times relative to my hourly rate at work.  

[ChuckD]

Well, it's been nearly a month, but progress hasn't stopped on ye olde Bf-110.  The construction is complete and I've managed to get it primed with Mr. Surfacer 1500 black (great stuff).  The reason why it took me a bit is because I wanted to build a Hasegawa Bf-109F4 Trop as an experimentation piece for painting RLM 79 and 78.  The Hasegawa kit is just a simple dream, by the way.  Practically falls together and looks great out of the box.  

 

Anyway, I'm glad I did start painting with the 109, quite honestly.  A few months ago, I bought a bottle of Mr. Paint's RLM79 sand yellow and had planned on using it for this build.  I started shooting it on the 109's upper surfaces and it quickly became apparent that it was *way* too yellow.  I'm not an expert on German paint schemes, but apparently their color match is RLM79 "(variant 1)."  Maybe it's old news to others, but apparently there's a pretty vast difference between "variant 1" and what I came to believe was RLM79.  Live and learn.  

 

So, in looking around a bit, I found a couple other color equivalents.  I have a pretty decent stock of Tamiyas and Vallejo Model Colors, but lacked XF-59 that all the color mixes call for with respect to Tamiya paints.  I have the "RLM79" in Vallejo, but it was straight up pink.  Even adding in some flat brown didn't do the trick.  So, back to the drawing board.  I found RLM79 in Mr. Color at Sprue Brothers, so I've got a jar of that and XF-59 coming and I'll try either of those to get these birds painted. 

 

I cleaned up late last night after getting the base RLM 78 on the bottom of the 109 and the "marble coat" on the bottom of the 110, so no pics of paint progress just yet.  I guess I didn't have an appreciation for just how much real estate there is on this beast when it comes to painting. 

 

Question: Would the inboard sides of the vertical stabilizers below the horizontal stabilizer be painted RLM78 or 79?  I'm guessing 78, but (shockingly) Dragon's instructions are lacking.

 

 

 

 

 

Now that I'm done building the 109, I hope to make more frequent updates to this.  More to come soon.  

 

p.s. I don't have hours totals at hand, but I can tell you that getting to the same point on both aircraft required 1/3rd the time for the 109 as it did for the 110.  I'm 60+ hours into the 110 and only about 22 into the 109. 

Edited December 4, 2017 by Gewehr 43

[Daniel460]

Looking great so far, your about to put the "pretty" on. She's a big model! 

 

Dan

[MikeMaben]

Question: Would the inboard sides of the vertical stabilizers below the horizontal stabilizer be painted RLM78 or 79?  I'm guessing 78,

 

Yep, I agree but it is very difficult to find photographic proof.

Just makes sense that they would paint that area with the underside

of the horizontals.

[SCRATCH BUILDER]

Very nice work!