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Showing results for tags 'WWII Jets'.
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He-162 Volksjäger | HobbyBoss | 1/72 German Luftwaffe, I./JG1, 1945 Finished this on 1/2/2022. I just wanted a simple build to finish quickly before the end of the year -- and I just about made it. I went with the more brown/purple interpretation of RLM 81 Brown violet rather than the dark green interpretation. I believe now that I painted the tail fins wrong -- I believe they should be the bottom color blue rather than the top color, so the painting instructions guided me wrong there. The wheels are black, but in the historical photos I found they seemed to be either black or a light gray (RLM 02 maybe?) or a combination. I went with black because there was no way to tell where the wheel ended and tire began on the HobbyBoss wheels, so I had to free hand a wheel in black and a tire in Tamiya NATO black. Free handing circles is nearly impossible so the black on NATO black combination makes it nearly impossible to see what a terrible job I did. I couldn't find a picture of Wr no. 120097, but I found several of 120067 which also was a light colored '4' and had the same unit marking, so that added some confusion. So if nothing else, this model is a general representation of what He-162s might look like toward the end of the war. The kit itself was simple and fit together well. They made some engineering choices that made the gear doors easy to install, but at the same time the wheel wells look bad. It's a tail sitter so I had to put some weight behind the cockpit (since the top half connects to the bottom half and there was an opening there). As usual with HobbyBoss, the cockpit was a featureless tub. I used Eduard steel seat belts to spruce up the seat (since it will be plainly visible through the large, crystal clear canopy). I decided to make an instrument panel and shroud and used the IP/shroud of a Testors F/A-18 back seater to do that (pictures follow). I'm normally not a panel line pre-shader, but almost all the He-162s I found historical photos of had a distinct vertical striping in the paint under the cockpit and along the side to the back of the wings. I tried to emulate this with black pre-shading. Finishing: Seams filled with Testors putty, scratchbuilt part of the cockpit, Eduard Steel Luftwaffe seatbelts Paint: Hataka orange line paints: Custom mix of 1 part RLM79b to 2 parts RLM82 for the green, custom mix of 1 part RLM79b to 2 parts RLM81 for the brown violet, RLM76 for the bottom. Here's how I trimmed the F/A-18 shroud to fit the He-162 cockpit. The edges are rough, but are concealed by the canopy framing: And here's the instrument panel -- I should've trimmed it up higher so the pilot can get his legs under it, but with RLM66 Black Gray on it, you can't see it through the canopy: The finished cockpit. Eduard steel seat belts and a gunsight I carved out of the absolutely enormous one that HobbyBoss provided. In retrospect I should've made a new control stick, but I wasn't sure how to cut the old one out without damaging the seat and side walls. The IP decal was trimmed from my recent HobbyBoss F8F-1 decal sheet. Hope you like it! Comments, questions and constructive criticism welcome!