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Me 262 A1, Revell 1/72 scale


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My first jet build since about 1990, I think! The Revell 1/72 scale kit seems to enjoy a reasonably good reputation, appears to be dimensionally accurate, has a good standard of detail and can be picked up for a song!

 

Token sprue shot, with decals. The decals look nice and seem very comprehensive. 

 

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The cockpit is really nice as an out of the box build. A decal for the instrument panel might have improved things, but hey, I'm more than happy with anything that includes moulded seatbelts and rudder pedals. The white striped are is the three-level main switchboard, with the white representing the labelling for the hundreds of switches present.

 

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Engine pods. These are quite nice, with the exhaust centres fitting accurately and nice compressor faces. There is a noticeable amount of shrinking on the upper forward area. I think I've got it, but the proof will be at the priming stage. I drilled out the holes at the point of the intake centre bodies. These holes are quite big on the real jets, and they give access to the starting handles for the 262's other two engines. As well as the two Jumo jet engines, the 262 had two, 10HP flat-twin two stroke engines, one installed in each intake centre body. These provided power to spin up the compressors and turbines before jet engine start, and are an early example of an APU.

 

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Old, lead split shot, now not permitted for fishing, wil pack easily in the nose to prevent tail sitting.

 

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The wings went together well and the engines needed limited fettling to get a nice fit. I think some filler is going to be needed, but I think I've managed to minimise it.

 

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Hello nice progress your making there . If you'll indulge me , I constructed this kit some time back and discovered a error . If you examine the underside of the cockpit tub and the area adjacent to its position inside the fuselage you will notice a lot of detail that will be lost if you install the wing as is . To expose this detail you must remove a portion of the landing gear " roof " . Not all of it , just the area above the " wheel well " itself . At the time of my build I deduced all this logically. Since then I've been able to verify this detail against the newer Academy rendering as well as the older Hasegawa example . While the Hasegawa isn't as detailed as either the Academy or the Revell ,there was at least an attempt at the general shape in this area. Hope this adds to the fun .

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I wondered about the logic of Revell having applied vast amounts of detail to the underside of the cockpit tub! I'll have a look at the drawings/photos I've got of the wheel well area and see what surgery is indicated!

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Your work in the cockpits looks great.  As for opening up the wheel wells, I've been of two minds on that one.  Granted, it's pretty cool to open them up to expose the additional details, but unless you are going to set model on a mirror, it does get lost.  Sure you can always pick it up to show someone, but then there is the risk of damaging you kit... what to do, what to do...  LOL
 

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How's the cockpit transparency? I built this last year and it seemed like the mould was way past it's useful life. I ended up getting a vac replacement. Just curious.

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3 hours ago, warhawk said:

A quick note in advance:

Use white glue or Blu-Tack for fixing the lead wights.

 

If You use super-glue it will oxydize over time, expand, and split the model in two.

http://www.ratomodeling.com/articles/lead_ca/lead_ca.html

Thanks - good plan, avoiding CA.

I was planning on using acrylic painters' caulk, as it won't attack plastic and is fiendishly sticky. Back in the day I had blutak dry out and become detached so the nose weight ended up lodged down the tail-end where is made a tail sitter even more determined to tailsit!

11 hours ago, Wm Blecky said:

Your work in the cockpits looks great.  As for opening up the wheel wells, I've been of two minds on that one.  Granted, it's pretty cool to open them up to expose the additional details, but unless you are going to set model on a mirror, it does get lost.  Sure you can always pick it up to show someone, but then there is the risk of damaging you kit... what to do, what to do...  LOL
 

Oh, I'm going to open  mine up! fairly soon, the two kits are going to get introduced to my big pillar drill!

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15 hours ago, 3Chordwonder said:

How's the cockpit transparency? I built this last year and it seemed like the mould was way past it's useful life. I ended up getting a vac replacement. Just curious.

3Chord, mine are really good. However, I should point out the following: my two examples came from Kingkit, and on the original shrink wrapping was a price tag for ED Models (of fond memory!) for £2.99! I wouldn't care to speculate how old these were (I seem to remember buying from ED in the late 80's/early 90's) but they aren't likely to reflect how the moulds are behaving now...

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22 hours ago, 3Chordwonder said:

How's the cockpit transparency? I built this last year and it seemed like the mould was way past it's useful life. I ended up getting a vac replacement. Just curious.

I have several of the Revell 262 kits and with each, the canopy has not been the best (a bit of an understatement in some instances).  If you do not mind working with vac form canopies, I can not recommend highly enough the ones by Rob Taurus, they are the proverbial bee's knees!  Owl has been my "go to" shop for the Rob Taurus canopies (and many other items) for many, many years now.  HTH.

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Progress has been slower than I would have liked due to a number of issues unrelated to modelmaking. As usual, I seem to be able to ham-fist the fit of almost any component, so I've been doing a lot of fettling of joints etc.

 

The other thing has been markings choices. I set out with the firm intention of building one of these a the mount of one of the legendary Experten who flew 262's, whether as part of JV-44 or otherwise. My first choice was Walter Nowotny's "White 8", part of Kommando Nowotny, and well represented in artwork old and new. The trouble is there doesn't seem to be a single actual photo of White 8 to confirm the accuracy of the artwork! This provoked a rethink, and I decided to go with Heinz Bär's "Red 13" of EJG 2, of which there are at least two photographs :thumbsup: Next task is to locate some black-outlined red numbers in the correct font. I could get the markings as part of a set, but don't really want to buy an aftermarket decal sheet with about a dozen 262's on it when these will be the only two I build, probably.

 

The scheme for the second one is part of scratching an old itch. Hopefully it will prove that "I am the one you warned me of..."

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Mmm...

I have two 262's on my table. One Revell and one Hasegava. The Revell one is the Me 262 B-1a/U1 and the clear parts are as clear as it can be. Is it just the Revell A-1a that suffers from bad clear parts? the only thing is that I feel that the seats in both kits are rather small. Are they in correct size or... ?

 

Cheers / André

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2 hours ago, Andre B said:

Mmm...

I have two 262's on my table. One Revell and one Hasegava. The Revell one is the Me 262 B-1a/U1 and the clear parts are as clear as it can be. Is it just the Revell A-1a that suffers from bad clear parts? the only thing is that I feel that the seats in both kits are rather small. Are they in correct size or... ?

 

Cheers / André

My Revell canopies are fine, but as I said, they're not new castings. The seats do look small, but seem right when compared with photos. Roomy fighter cockpits are a bit of a contradiction in terms, genrally.

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2 hours ago, Mitch K said:

My Revell canopies are fine, but as I said, they're not new castings. The seats do look small, but seem right when compared with photos. Roomy fighter cockpits are a bit of a contradiction in terms, genrally.


Comparing those seats with seats in an 1/72 Bf 109, Bf 110 or an Fw 190 they look small. And as the cockpit in the Me 262 is more roomy i looks rather "strange". Comparing with the pilots seat in an 1/72 Ju 88 the Me 262 seat looks like to fit to an 1/144 scale Me 262. Well maybe not that small... : )

 

Som good pictures of an Me 262...

http://www.ipmsstockholm.se/home/messerschmitt-me-262b-in-detail/

 

Cheers / André

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  • 1 month later...

Fitting the fuselages etc went without undue incident, and after a repeat go of filling after priming, the two aircraft got their paint. I had some other photos of the intermediate stages, but I can find where they went... Oh well.

 

Here's the underside of Red 13:

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And again, with the red nose cone painted in:

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And shots of the other one, above and below. This colour looks a half-decent match to the original.

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Here's Pritzl Bar's "Red 13", with the upper camouflage airbrushed in.

 

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The above was all hard-masked to give me accurate lines, since I'm not sure of my ability to airbrush straight lines freehand.

 

I added the mottling in afterwards (freehand with the airbrush, with great trepidation!), which has the effect of softening the divisions between the upper and lower colours.

 

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What I really need to do now is turf the rest of my family off the big PC so I can run the graphics programs I need to create the decals!

 

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The seats got removed before I masked up the cockpits. Let's face it, they were going to get pulled out by the tape anyway.

 

I took the opportunity add head rests/head armour, which the kit does't include, and to scratch up a couple of Revi 16 gunsights from 60 thou plastic card and clear sheet from a packet of tap washers.

 

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Installed, this is the result.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

 I have finally managed to book enough time on the "real" computer to get Inkscape running and print these:

 

 

 

 

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It's fairly obvious that the spacing as it was typed into Inkscape is way too wide, but trimming them down is no big deal. I think these look about right.

 

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