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The Fi.103A-1/Re-4 Reichenberg was a crewed V1 flying bomb that was to be air-launched, and was flown by Hanna Reitsch to establish the reasons why some pilots had fatally crashed when attempting to land the aircraft during testing, which turned out to be vicious stall characteristics at low speeds. Special Hobby created a kit of the type in 2002 under their old MPM brand, so it’s by no means a new tooling. I picked one up the other day as I hadn’t got a crewed V1, so it was an obvious hole in my tiny stash. Ahem. It’s not a kit of many parts for obvious reasons, and some of them are a bit mushy by modern standards, so I had an idea to keep scrubbing at it while I carried on with my other projects. I started with the cockpit, which is basic to say the least, but then so was the real thing. It has a tiny instrument panel, and here the kit part seems to have had the wrong number of dials moulded-in, so I removed those and put some Airscale WWII German bezels in there, which will get some Airscale decals later on. The seat was also moulded into the two fuselage halves, and it would have been purgatory to hide that later on after the cockpit was closed up and painted. Nein danke. I removed the moulded-in seat (after taking measurements) with my Galaxy Model rotary tool, and fabricated a new one from a small piece of sheet styrene surrounded by some 0.4mm strip that made a shallow box initially. I cut a piece of thick styrene to fit within it, then out came the motor tool again to give the piece the look of a cushion. I sanded it to give a softer look, then glued it into the box, after which I sanded the underside so it (sort of) matched the profile of the fuselage interior. That means I can glue it into position after completion and hide a big chunk of the internal seam in the process. The rudders are attached to something that looks like a cheap exercise bike frame, and it has a horrible-looking control column butt-jointed to the rear end that resembles a nipped-off cocktail stick end. The real thing is tubular with a flat top, so I made a new one from strip with a punched-out piece of sheet styrene glued to the top. After taking the time to make my own seat lower, I took a look at the back cushion that is moulded into the rear bulkhead, and didn’t like that much either. It was a bit squiffy and roughly finished, so out came the styrene sheet and semi-circular rod, with six strips attached to a thin sheet and then cut to shape once dry. The kit detail was then sanded off to make the bulkhead featureless, so I can (hopefully) glue it on square later on. There was a strip moulded into one side of the fuselage interior, which I scraped off and made good with filler, hiding the left-overs from the seat removal at the same time too. I replaced the strip on both sides with more evergreen, and am currently mulling over whether to replicate the weird toilet-cistern mechanism looking thing that is seen on the left side of the cockpit in some pics. I’m going to put a couple of stays behind the instrument panel to give it a good bonding surface, as I don’t want to be playing hide-and-seek with the part later in the build. One big nuisance that’s going to rear its ugly head later on is the intake cone on the pulse-jet motor, which was a rough moulding to say the least. I cleaned up the seams, but once it was looking smooth, it really didn’t fit the rest of the tube, which is moulded into the fuselage, so there’s going to be a lot of putty in my future, I’m sure. There’s a mesh grating behind the lip, which is suitable to use, and I’ll be painting the aft interior with some Black 3.0 so nothing will be seen from the exhaust tube, which is also going top need some fettling before painting. SESSION 2 I did a little detailing of the fuselage interior this session, making up the toilet-cistern thingy on the left, adding a box on the right and wiring things up a bit. I also glued the blank bulkhead and the V-shaped top section into position, the latter needing a 0.25mm shim down the right side to make it fit a little more snugly. I primed all that up ready for paint, and it looks well enough, or rather it will when the rest of the parts go inside with it. When I was putting the wings together, I wasn’t happy with the thickness of the aerofoil, which looked a bit chunky to me. I’ve been up really close to a standard V-1 at Cosford to give me a clue, so I zizzed off the projecting ejector pins and then put both surfaces on each wing to the coarsest sandpaper I possess. After a bit of finger sanding I scraped the roughness off and smoothed them down, fitting them together to see if I’d done enough. I had, but I’d bananaed up the ends a little so I glued them together and after they’d set up overnight, I started sanding the aerofoil shape to a better profile, smoothing out the whole thing and in the process removing the lip at the root end, and some of the panel line at the tip, with a view to reinstating those features once I was done. The panel lines were easily rescribed, and I wrapped a thin strip of styrene around the wing-root, gluing it with CA to save melting the surfaces. That’s now complete, as you can see below: I’ve also prepped the flying surfaces that butt-join to the rear of the aerofoil, which is why I’ve kept a narrow flat trailing edge. The ailerons needed quite a bit of clean-up thanks to a bit of mould-slip, but nothing insurmountable. There is a very delicate actuator near the tip of each surface, and amazingly I managed not to break either one off! The rest of the parts have been primed to check whether they’re ready, and the next task is to paint the interior with some RLM02. Even with my simple augmentations there’s not much in there, so it shouldn’t take long to get the detail painting and washes done. I’m going to have yet another model predominantly finished the construction phase. That’s my favourite part SESSION 3 Got the wash on the cockpit after doing the detail painting, and finally glued in the new seat back, cushion and the other few greeblies & wires, decaled the new instrument panel, then matted the cockpit down. A few coats of gloss on the dials should give the impression of glass, then I can install the panel and close up the fuselage. Then I’ve got some fairly rough seams to deal with and that nasty-looking intake trunk

Hi guys and girls, So firstly I’m not 100% sure this is in the right place, but hey ho here we go anyway! So I’m about to loose the mancave 😭, as our daughter really does need her own bedroom soon and we need our own space back! 😃 But prior to this I want to do a quick project and build three “Cute” planes in order to make her a custom mobile! The chosen kits are the following: Tiger Models Cute BF-109 by Neal, on Flickr Tiger Models Cute Spitfire by Neal, on Flickr Meng Kids Lancaster Bomber. by Neal, on Flickr My wife will be joining in and will be building the Spitfire! Which means a lot to me. Also these kits will be painted up in some nice a bright colours: Pink, Purple, Blue, etc... and will probably have some fantasy camo schemes. That is all for now folks, take care and happy modelling! Neal

Santa was good to me this year so I thought I'd share this build with you just to spread some Christmas cheer! Guinness World Records are, of course, known worldwide, unlike their modelling branch which has produced these little beauties: The set comes with three main sprues; two pairs and a singleton, and a set of clears... Just noticed on the photo that these are upside down - much watch that during assembly. At first the instructions look pretty comprehensive, and then I noticed they only show a build for one of the types (the 119): I hope I'm going to be able to interpret these for other types. Yet to be seen if my modelling skills are up to this. Step 1 is to remove the parts from the sprue. I've chosen the 277 to build first as the colours are brightest. Removal of the parts was pretty straightforward with, amazingly, no additional mould creep to remove or extrusion marks to fill in: Careful removal of the wing root blanks is necessary prior to main wing assembly. This is also a good shot of the cabin detail and general quality of this moulding. Notice the split in the fuselage here (more on that later)... Main wing assembly. Notice that the wing only goes through this far - you then have the nerve-wracking job of easing the fuselage split apart enough to take to wing, and then closing up again afterwards... Next problem is that the tailplane has a flat profile and no help on which way up it goes (both sides shown here): No help in the BM walk-arounds or on the Internet either. Perhaps I'll be able to pick up a book at the next show, but for now I'll have to guess 277 side up. Here she is assembled ready for fitting of the nose. Love those panel lines... they're OOB, no scribing required!! The kit comes with five noses from 1 to 5 grams and, again disappointingly, no guidance on which fits what model other than "to try them and see which works best". Huh! Pretty poor show I know, and not what we've come to expect at BM. Well that's it for now and I hope you enjoyed the build. I probably won't post the other type builds as I expect to share them with the family and, to be honest, they're not as serious about scale modelling as I am. And I probably won't post in RFI. The jokes probably a bit thin by now. Merry Xmas all and here's to a great modelling and sharing 2015!