Henk Ensing

Hi Michael, So, you weren't satisfied with your first attempt after all? Good for you to get it spot on this time (though the first one looked the part). I wanted to point you to an article in "Klassiker der Luftfahrt" that described the development of the radial-engined Bf 109, but at the time my magazine collection was still in boxes. At the moment I have the article in front of me, it's in the second magazine of 2011, pages 16-19. At the point of scanning some pictures, a quick search on another favorite site of mine (Secret Projects Forum) found the article already scanned in a thread about the Bf 109x and Bf 109v21, which you can find here: http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,12320.0.html Interestingly the side view from the article and the one from the last post in the thread seem to deviate quite substantially... Succes building this one!

Jack - thanks for the tip: that's more or less what I did! To recreate the oxygen hose I used thin electrical wire consisting of a small diameter plastic tube with multiple copper threads inside - fantastic stuff for modeling! I rapped a few strings of the copper wire around the tube, fixing it with CA glue. Worked a treat! This is how my workstation is looking right now - pretty spotless, but it wasn't like this until a few hours ago. I've started preparing the sub-assemblies that make up the fuselage. Interestingly the fuselage is made up of three main pieces: cockpit with nose, internal intake section and rear fuselage. The internal intake section is a rather nice piece of work. Unfortunately I closed it up before taking a picture. If I did I might have been a bit more careful removing the ejection marks that are inside - grrr... Another thing that crossed my mind is not to forget to airbrush part of the fuselage that will be next to the intakes, which is going to be a pain when everything is fused together. Dryfitting shows a sizable piece of kit being grown out of al these pieces of plastic. And yes, with that nose cap it really starts to look like a Hunter! Thanks for all the comments and until next time: Happy New Year! Henk

Hi Jens - that casting looks fantastic!

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome and your words of encouragement - much appreciated! The seat still needed some belts, which I scratched out of various pieces of tape, fashioned the quick release using some metal foil. The belt system on this ejection seat (but probably most others as well) consist of a belt set for the chute (kaki) and a belt set for the seat itself (blue). All things considering Revell really did provide quite a basic representation of these. Oh yeah, I tackled those pesky little black-and-yellow stripes on the ejection handles Still looking for some material to turn into an oxygen hose. Till then, thanks for your attention!

Finally took the plunge and after years of visiting and watching your work I'm finally presenting a work in progress of my own. The subject in this case being Revell's 1/32nd scale Hawker Hunter, which will depict a Dutch Hunter when it's completed. Starting this kit signals a new beginning in many ways: getting kids, moving house is a sure way of killing each hobby - so being able to get modeling again is a sign of things getting 'normal again'. From a builders perspective another 'revolution' happened: I've started using acrylics - Vallejo in this case - and boy, what a difference that has made. Switching colors has become a breeze. And it's pretty amazing to be able to thin and clean using basically water. On top of that I've never had so much confidence in using my airbrush. So yeah, I'm more than happy having taken the plunge. Another thing that warrants mentioning is the noticeable absence of the entire house smelling like paint! The Ejection Seat. Waiting for peace of mind and a steady hand to get the yellow and black stripes on the handles just right. Some highlighting and weathering still to be done. And then the biggie: creating some seat belts. For starters, I sanded back the seats original 'belts' and added some homemade seat and rear padding. I found some interesting source material on the net that should give me enough inspiration to create something resembling the real thing. No transfers for the dials on instrument panel are included. So careful highlighting of the instruments is needed. A drop of Humbrol Clear was used to recreate the glass front of the dials. Looking at the images I probably add another one or two drops to get a better result. It's pretty amazing to see the amount of detailing can be achieved in a cockpit that has 'black' as it's default color. This link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/willp/3357485556/in/photostream/ shows the amount of abuse in a real Hawker Hunter cockpit.