1/32 Revell Me 262-A (New Tool) July 2019 Release

[Gazzas]

16 hours ago, Mebo said:

Hello

 

The rivets on the Me262 seems to be the can of worms that come up every time the models of the 262 is discussed.

I would like to drop my 2 cents on the subject.

The 262 is one of my favorite subjects and i have quite a bit of reference material on it.

My gut feeling so far :

There was no doubt a lot of putty put on the 262 before paint, but it did not cover all the rivets.

The more pics i study the more i get the feeling putty was primarily used on the panel joints and secondarily on leading edge rivets (both wings and fuselage).

 

Also there is a wide range of the quality of the putty work.

Please remember the desperate conditions of the production facilities in the closing days of the war in Europe.

Parts for the 262 was produced at a myriad of subcontractors by unskilled labor (forced labor/slaves).

Final assembly took place under far from ideal locations . Sometimes final assembly line was concealed in the forest under open sky.

 

Despite the strict specifications of the RLM the final products varied very much in the terms of quality and surface finish.

 

My conclusion:

 

Have fun modelling. If you like rivets please add some to the 262 especially on the rear fuselage and rear of the wings. :-)

 

 

Cheers

 

Mikkel

 

 

Operational Me262 A-1a  W.Nr 110926 of III./EJG 2 . Lechfeld 1945

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great post!

 

That is such a great photo.  Wish it was in color...  and I don't mean colorized after the fact.  There's so many blotches, blots, and scuffs...  it looks like it's been in service for a long time...

Edited April 28, 2019 by Gazzas

[Mebo]

1 hour ago, Gazzas said:

 

That is such a great photo.  Wish it was in color...  and I don't mean colorized after the fact.  There's so many blotches, blots, and scuffs...  it looks like it's been in service for a long time...

 

I wish too.

 

It is so unfortunate the later in the war the worse the quality of the pictures.

 

There is many good pictures that show the rivets and putty work on the prototypes and first batch of production machines. But not many that show the

operational machines in so great detail.

 

Cheers

 

Mikkel

Edited April 28, 2019 by Mebo

[Thunderbolt]

It really is an amazing scheme 

[Thunderbolt]

18 hours ago, Gazzas said:

Great post!

 

That is such a great photo.  Wish it was in color...  and I don't mean colorized after the fact.  There's so many blotches, blots, and scuffs...  it looks like it's been in service for a long time...

No head armor plate for that Gerry btw...

[VintageEagle]

The boxart is apparently out! But no info about decal options yet. I assume White 4 will be one of the options. But White 4 was never equipped with R4M. It was a training aircraft attached to EJG 2. It was also fitted with the experimental wooden vertical stabilizer and rudder.

 

Edited April 30, 2019 by VintageEagle

[Rick Griewski]

Stabilizer... Would the wood design be all/look all that different?  Maybe the rudder was different; smooth with no rib details?

 

Rockets?!  Details, details.  I can use the rockets on another kit or portray a different aircraft.  Hope they have fins.  I have decals waiting.

 

Revell just needs to focus and get this kit out on the Market. 

[Thunderbolt]

I'm excited  - I am definitely considering pre-ordering it 

 

[Chek]

While not an Me 262 - or even a Luftwaffe - fan, I could be tempted by a Revell kit of their P-51 quality. Mainly because it is a landmark iconic plane and a suitable contemporary for my HKM Meteor. With a set of Brassin wheels and a paintjob resembling W.Nr 110926 above it could be a standout.

 

With regard to the puttied rivets question, as with the Mustang wings, I'd go with the ghost presence approach. They might well have been smoothed and faired over to invisibility when the aircraft was sitting still on the ground, but airplanes are a collection of fastened together parts more or less moving in complete harmony until flexed by air pressures,  uneven G-forces and hard landings. The putty has clearly flaked off exposing some rivets on '926 above, but rows of evenly spaced black dots would be very inappropriate too.

[Rick Griewski]

"Ghost presence approach", I like that.  Variable thickness primer should be good.

 

Rick

[Thunderbolt]

It appears it is no longer available for preorder from HLJ

[Darren Howie]

On 4/27/2019 at 11:16 PM, Jennings Heilig said:

 

No, that’s not what I said. But there is a difference between a brand new airplane and a decades old airplane that’s been restored.

 

Bottom line:  show me a photo of any in service Me262 that has rivets visible the way the rivets on the Trumpeter kit look. You can’t because they didn’t.

 

Well in 1945 DSLR’s that coukd capture the detail you require to be convinced where nit going to be around for another 70 years.

Those with cameras when able where not shooting the angles you can get on museum aircraft to highlight the details.

Never mind the dynamic range of film, the quality of processing, storage etc means you can tell most photos struggle to even get a nice image of the aircraft period.

But if you believe captive Jews, Slovaks, Poles and Russians where so dedicated to the nazi cause that they would spend hours filling every rivet good luck.

You might want to convince the guys in JG7 who flew and the black men who maintained them in combat though as every bit of first hand evidence is they where far from the condition you believe.

But hey what would they know?

 

 

[Thunderbolt]

15 hours ago, Darren Howie said:

 

Well in 1945 DSLR’s that coukd capture the detail you require to be convinced where nit going to be around for another 70 years.

Those with cameras when able where not shooting the angles you can get on museum aircraft to highlight the details.

Never mind the dynamic range of film, the quality of processing, storage etc means you can tell most photos struggle to even get a nice image of the aircraft period.

But if you believe captive Jews, Slovaks, Poles and Russians where so dedicated to the nazi cause that they would spend hours filling every rivet good luck.

You might want to convince the guys in JG7 who flew and the black men who maintained them in combat though as every bit of first hand evidence is they where far from the condition you believe.

But hey what would they know?

 

I had difficulty understanding this. 

 

There's enough evidence to support that rivets and panel lines were puttied in front of the cockpit and panel lines were prioritized aft of the cockpit with whole rows of rivets left unputtied. This makes plain sense from an aerodynamic standpoint. Slaves could have easily been ordered to carry out this task, and it's reasonable enough to believe that they did. 

 

There's enough evidence to support that buying a Mig wash and darkening every single rivet black in the same tone is an artistic preference that makes for a good looking model but isn't necessarily a reflection of what was real. I think the reason why this topic comes up often, and why some have grown so weary with it, is because we have to make decisions as modelers, and we want those decisions to be justified. So when we cut the trumpeter wing and fuselage halves off the sprues and decide what to do with the endless multitude of homogeneously depicted rivets, such considerations come to mind: do I "P-51" my wings and get rid of all the rivets? do I leave some? Do I leave all? 

 

Right, clearly the 262's skin is not the case of the P-51 wing; perfectly puttied in the factory and painted silver such that rivets were very difficult to make out. The 262 is a much more haggard version of the P-51 as a result of the haphazard production conditions and standards. The vast majority of 262 pictures show an overall clean skin with a lot of dents, with rivets visible here and there. This seems to apply particularly along the fuselage from behind the gun door to just aft of the cockpit, aft of the engine nacelles, and most of all, the engine nacelles themselves. Thus, a mixture of stressed skin, putty lines visible underneath the paint, frankly dirty rivets and some cleaner rivets in less predictable patterns is probably the ideal.

 

 

 

Edited May 2, 2019 by thunderbolt1988

[LSP_Ray]

I just hope the first line in Revell's instructions isn't "Remove excessive flash from parts before assembly."

[nmayhew]

27 minutes ago, LSP_Ray said:

I just hope the first line in Revell's instructions isn't "Remove excessive flash from parts before assembly."

 

sounds like it should be!

[Radub]

3 hours ago, LSP_Ray said:

I just hope the first line in Revell's instructions isn't "Remove excessive flash from parts before assembly."

 

There will be no sunch "instruction". The kit is largely similar to the two-seater. In as far as I know, on that kit Matt Low of this forum had some trouble with the bulkhead ahead of the cockpit which was a very tight fit. In as far as I recall, Matt "rounded" slightly the edges of that bulkhead and the "problem" disappeared. Matt may be able to explain it better. 

Radu 

Edited May 2, 2019 by Radub