Tristar Fieseler Storch

[desmojen]

The Tristar 1/35 Storch is a brand new kit, and will be a very welcome addition for many 1/35 armour modellers I suspect. The kit isn't quite out yet in the UK but will be here very soon!

I have been given this as a pre production test shot to build. This means, no box, no instructions and no decals. At first glance my immediate reaction was something like this....

However, I soon realised that I had an extra engine sprue and it started to look less scary. After making a plea here on Britmodeller, Edgar stepped up and has lent me a copy of the Wings and Wheels publication on the Storch. This book was very helpful, the photographs within provided me with all the info I needed to start construction.

The parts are all moulded in a sand coloured plastic which is a nice density, not Hasegawa hard, not Airfix soft. The parts all look pretty chunky at first glance, but a good amount of detail is included and once you start building it does start to look good.

Sprue shots,

I began by assembling the engine. Any mystery on where the parts go was soon cleared up because all the parts have keyed locating tabs, it's not actually possible to build it wrongly! Everything fitted snugly, to the extent that you could cheerfully build it without glue if you were so inclined.

Once I had Edgars book to hand I worked out where all the interior parts went and dry fitted it all together.

The only fixings in these shots are a tiny bit of Blu-Tack to hold the IP in and a little bit of tape ahead of the cockpit. You can see just how good a fit the fuselage halves are, and this is without glue!

While there is a good level of detail already there, the book showed that a few key elements were missing or not well done, these being, the throttle and mixture lever quadrant on the port side of the cockpit, the circuit breaker panel on the starboard side, seatbelts for both seats and a lack of any weaponry.

I made some belts from lead foil using buckles from a Reheat etched sheet for the pilots seat. This took ages so I cheated for the rear seat and used lap straps only from a 1/48(!) MDC German seatbelts set. The throttle quadrant is a small piece of plastic card with some spare etched levers from some other set.

Lastly, the armament. I'm a little confused by the kit here. There is a lens type machine gun mount included for the roof of the canopy, but there is no gun, and I think a whole new canopy is actually required to use the lens mount (as in the Tamiya kit). Edgars book points out though, that unarmed Storches always carried an MP40 submachine gun and extra magazines in the rear cockpit for the crews self defence in the event of an emergency.

This being 1/35 scale I simply raided my Dragon Kingtiger kit for a machine gun. Unfortunately, there were no spare magazines in the kit, so I put a whole ammo box in. The ammo box is stuck down to the floor, and the MP40 has a custom made lead foil strap. it probably isn't 100% accurate, but it does busy up the rear of the cockpit nicely.

Seatbelt and IP.

Finished interior.

The cockpit is all painted RLM02 with Gunze acrylic. Weathering was mainly done with Tamiya weathering master, along with a touch of Phils wash here and there.

Once all that was done I was able to glue the fuselage halves together, and then they were sanded as necessary. No filler was needed as I had expected.

The next step was to fit the canopy. It all went a bit pear shaped at this point!

Because the canopy has to bear the weight of the wings, Tristar have supplied a very thick and strong one piece moulding. This is perfectly fine but it didn't fit easily at the front, it needed a good push down to fit snugly. No problem thought I, I pushed it down and kept pressure applied while I carefully added a small amount of superglue. Because I lack patience, I then added some accelerator with a microbrush to save me sitting holding the thing for ages. Bosh, instant nice fitting canopy. Seconds later, when I picked it up again, I saw that the accelerator had crazed the canopy

Silly me. This happened to me once before when I was making my ME262. I might remember it this time!

I then had a jolly old game fitting the underneath pieces into the canopy. Because of the shape of the thing there's no way to do it before you fit the main glazing. Again, the pieces didn't fit well and a lot of trimming was necesary to get it all in. Final filling and fairing in of the canopy was done with Micro Crystal Klear.

Last pic for now shows the completed fuselage and glazing ready for painting. The engineering and fit of the kit is such that it can be built and painted as a series of sub assemblies and then fitted together at the end. Bit of a bonus that because masking and painting around all the stuts and glazing would have been a real PITA!

More soon,

Jen.

[bexwh773]

Cor Jen, you dont like things easy do ya hun?? Looks very impressive, love the MP40 & IP

Bex

[AnonymousDFB1]

Looking good Jen

[dahut]

Nie stuff, Jen. This is on your website, too?

[zeke]

Good start jen...looking forward to the next installment...

[Phil @ Flory Models]

Spot on Jen, looking good

[periklis_sale]

It looks fab so far Jen!!!!!