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These brush-painted bare-metal jets appeared nicer than they had under their dust layers. At least the F-84F Thunderstreak (on second thought this might have been a Monogram kit?) has found a space in my display area, the RF-84F Thunderflash has more flaws and will stay only as long its space is not needed otherwise. The decals are not from the kits, I cannot recall who was their manufacturer. Marcus

Hello fellow modelers. This is my last project, the Renault 4L in 1/24, by Heller. This model is the Renault 4L basic, (labeled "TL", ) which means that has no antenna for radio system, or side protect panels alongside the body. Year 1985. I have decided to represent it in a quite acceptable condition, without being excessively worn out. The built is totally OOB. Most of the time was spent in the engine bay, that I tried to reproduce according to the real thing. The front bonnet an the right door are not glued, in order to see the interior: A fun model, that I hope you like and enjoy, as I did during the modelling. If you want to see the bulidng process, this is the link to the WIP thread: Rhank you for watching! Josep

Joining with this kit.

Hello fellows, Here, my current project, the Renault 4L, in 1:24 scale, by Heller: The mould was released in 2015. The first impression is quite good. I only noticed that the frontal grill is a compact piece... ...and that windows and doors are indeed the same clear part, as tipically in Heller models. That means that you have to carefully mask the doors when painting. And neither allows you to depict the windows open. Following the instructions, I started with the engine: Here, the engine is already installed in the chasis. For practical reasons, I removed the air filter. I painted and put the sats in place. This pic shows a little test, in oder to fit the wheels... After this, I started the body painting process, masking the clear parts, etc... I liked my 4L in yellow. There are a wide variariy of tones, starting from an ultra intense yellow, others with orange or cream tonalities, untilI a very palid... Here, one example of the real thing, with the yellow I liked the most: To achieve this tonality, I used the Vallejo 71.288 UK BSC 64 Port. Stone, which in my opinion fits very well: The idea is to show the vehicle in an accepatble state of conservation; so I'm thinking only in a light weathering Here, the dashboard already painted, and put in their place over the chasis: After putting the decals and the steering wheel, the dashborad is also completed: After installing all the windows, I put the body and the chasis together: All fits quite well. In this part, I added the steering column. In this pic, the radiator is also in their place, altogether with some decals: The next step was to install the battery, accesories, additional wires, etc. According to the instructions, there are two bars that connect from the dashboard with the engine bay. The long one connects with the gearshift lever. But the second one (the short) I don't know what function has. You can see both installed in the next pictures: Surpringly, after checking in the Internet, I did not find any picture of this second bar (the short one)... So, finally I decided to remove this bar. I used the hole for adding some wires: This is the engine bay, almost totally finished: So, that's all for the moment. I hope you like it! Cheers, and thank you for watching. Josep

Royal Danish Air Force F-84G Thunderjet Esk 725, 1950s Heller kit / Lima November decals Worked away at the old Heller kit for this one. Wing top surfaces were re-scribed but I left all those fuselage panels as raised details. In hindsight I should have put in the effort and scribed them as I did in my previous F-84G build (USAF version - see photos). My inspiration was the release of those excellent Lima November decals. I was always going to do one of the camo options but I struggled to find out whether the undersides were in PRU Blue or Medium Sea Grey. There is a colour illustration in the decal instructions but it looks about mid way between the two so isn't much help. In the end I found a couple of discussion items on this forum and went for the PRU Blue option. USAF version built some years ago:

I really wanted a Heinkel He 112B in Romanian markings and I put a lot of effort into this model. Unfortunatelly this is the best I could do. I started with a RS models kit, gave much attention to the cockpit, battled very hard with the poor fit of very much every piece and other defects and innacuracies, including a bad warp where the fuselage meets the cabine and wings. I got to the no way to properly fit the cabine to the fuselage and ready to start painting when I finally realized that fixing the mentioned warp distracted me from properly aligning the wings and fuselage resulting in a slight X instead of a cross which once noticed could not be unnoticed. So I gave up on it, entered several auctions and finally managed to buy a Heller! The Heller kit is very pleasant to assemble, with an almost perfect fit and I think it is also better than the RS Models kit in portraying a He-112B overall. On the downside it has raised panel lines and no walls for the wheels bay area and needs detailing in certain areas at least. It turns out that addressing some of these things (rescribing the whole plane in particular) got the better of me and while I improved some skills (and got some better tools too), this happened at the expense of this particular model. The He 112 is an important plane for the Romanian airforce being the first relatively modern fighter entering service in significant numbers before the start of the war in Europe and flying the number 4 pictured here, Teodor Moscu destroyed two I-16s in the first day of the war, these being among the first victories of the Romanian Airforce in world war 2. It`s also a beautiful aircraft in my opinion and the austere one grey colour inside-out looks striking with the colourful and large Romanian roundels and tricolor painted rudder. I chose an early 1940 scheme, before Romania entered the war, when it only had national identification markings. I based it on this photo (which comes from a Romanian forum that now appears defunct): and a lot of conjectural research. The text on the photo places the ceremony at Campia Turzii (Transylvania) in 1940. Before Romania entered the war and before the Second Vienna Diktat that awarded large parts of Transylvania to Hungary, the Hungarian air force kept flying reconnaissance missions over Romanian territory with Romanian fighter aircraft having no luck intercepting them. On 27 August, flying a He-112B, future ace Nicolae Polizu intercepted a Hungarian Ca-135bis and downed it. Various Romanian and Hungarian sources differ as to where the incident occured (in Romanian or Hungarian airspace) and the consequences of the attack (crashed in Romania, crash landed on the Debrecen airfield, landed largely safely at Debrecen airfield etc.). The plane Polizu flew, the number of which I could not find, would have looked much like my model, my building mistakes aside. Now, for who is interested, the kit I`ve used is the Heller Humbrol 80240, the overall RLM 02 paint is LifeColor UA071 and this is a list of modifications and aftermarkets I`ve used:

I thought that I would open my account for 2024 with something different and a subject that I am unfamiliar with, so I will get to learn something along the way. The moment I saw the Record I thought that curves typified the rounded shapes of many American and European car manufacturers of the 1950's, add to that the chrome enhancements and I was sold on the idea of building this. I am not sure how far I will get, it depends how I cope with my chemotherapy treatment, but I am hoping that it will keep driving me forwards and give me another target to aim for. Here are photos of the box and contents and I don't intend adding too many bells and whistles so it will be built more or less as it comes. The Box, by John L, on Flickr Body, interior and chassis parts, by John L, on Flickr the shiny bits and tyres, by John L, on Flickr and finally, a set of destructions. by John L, on Flickr Off to check the ol' tinterweb to see what I can find. Cheers for now. John

I am a late starter for the GB as I could not decide on my build. So here it is The box contains two kits, one part started and the other untouched, I may do both if I have the space. As you can see I have decals for both QANTAS and the RAAF. I also have another QANTAS sheet for the later ochre cheatline scheme which I am tending towards.

Hello everybody, This year's theme for my local club display will be the Lockheed Shooting Star in its many incarnations, so my carefully planned Group Builds for 2024 were totally upset by the new priority. I set to work immediately and only later thought that my first choice would nicely fit in the rules of this GB, so let's start with the kit box: This is the very first issue of the Heller kit going back to the early '80s. I got it new to build the Thunderbirds scheme, though the decals were a disappointment and it remained in the stash for some time (40+ years!). Now it was finally time to build it! I have an Xtradecal sheet for multiple countries and will use the Luftwaffe part, this was the starting shot: Thanks for looking!

Below some images of my 1:72 Heller M4 conversion into a Sherman Ic Hybrid, to depict one from the 1st Coldstream Guards in Northern Germany in the spring of 1945. The cast front end came from a Dragon M4A1 (large hatch), left over after I used the turret and suspension on a Wee Friends M4A1 Duplex Drive, RB metal 17 pounder barrel on an extended Heller gun shield, radio box from a Dragon Sherman Vc, turret box from Dan Taylor Modelworks and the 'Tulip' launch rails and rockets from the Dragon 'Sherman V Tulip' kit. The tracks with extended end connectors are from OKB Grigorov. Stowage is from Black Dog, Dan Taylor and some 3D printed stuff. Decals are from an old Bison Decals sheet. Peter

Hello, I anticipated a lot this GB because there are so many wonderful subjects to build! My first will be the prototype which I plan to convert from the Heller F-84G kit. Now superseded by the Tamiya and Academy much better efforts, bust still enjoyable. Pictures to follow. Cheers Fabio

Hi all and a little egg-beater from Heller just finished for the 'In The Year I Was Born" GB here on Britmodeller. This a/c 195 (along with 196) were the first helicopters to enter service with the Helicopter Flight of the Irish Air Corps on November 25th, 1963 and operated in the SAR, Air Ambulance, army co-op and emergency relief roles until 2007. It's a credit to the crews and maintenance teams that 6 of the 7 machines still in service in 2007 were airworthy on their last day of ops, 44 years on. 195 is finished as she looked in June 1968, a month before my quiet arrival into the world 👶 The canopy and rotor fit weren't great and some of the finer parts are a little big but did my best with them. The build thread (and some classic 60's home-move footage of 195 in action that Summer) is here but to recap: Kit: Heller 1/72 Alouette III 'Securite Civile' boxing Build: OOB except for tape for belts and tea-bag mesh for the engine. Paints: Revell Acrylics with an airbrush; Klear; panel line wash. Decals: Max Decals donated by @rs2man Heller Alouette III IAC_Done (15) by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Heller Alouette III IAC_Done (22) by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Heller Alouette III IAC_Done (21) by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Heller Alouette III IAC_Done (10) by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Heller Alouette III IAC_Done (17) by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Heller Alouette III IAC_Done (13) by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Thanks for looking and happy modelling. Cheers, Dermot

A two-for-one with this post. I was given two of the same Heller kits (from 1993) and told I could have them for free if I returned one in its completed state. As with any Heller kit I've made, there was no issue in part fitting and the only (minor) issue was that the decals had to soak for a little longer than usual. The Polish version is painted in Vallejo's Model Air line (a brand of paints I've had almost exclusively bad results with) in German Braunviolet, and the Romanian in AK's Real Colors' Grau (1941). I haven't been able to find any colour photos of the olive drab that Poland painted their planes in, but I've read that it was very similar to the Luftwaffe's Braunviolet (which on its own is hard to track down a match for). This is also my first attempt at making a staging setup for my photos. At the time of this photo, it was a work-in-progress, and it remains so. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Polish PZL.23 Karaś, (translated as the Crucian Carp) was a light bomber and reconnaissance plane. Another two-for-one post, this time one is done in the Polish paint scheme and decals (drab) and the other in those of the Royal Romanian Air Force (olive and yellow). The Karaś was produced after the Polish-Soviet war of 1919-21 after the importance of aerial reconnaissance became evident. A new light bomber was also required, so PZL combined the two roles into the Karaś. At the time of its production, it was quite advanced, but the 1930s saw rapid improvements in aviation, so it was nearly considered obsolete by 1939 and the outbreak of the Second World War. At the time of Germany's invasion of Poland, the Karaś was Poland's primary light bomber and recon craft. It was a single Karaś that conducted the first bombing raid on a German factory on September 2nd, and columns of Karaś bombers were responsible for taking out nearly 30% of invading land vehicles. Unfortunately, they had minimal fighter support and their light armour ensured that they suffered heavy losses. After Poland's capitulation, many of the remaining Karaś craft were shipped to Romania to use against the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.

Saw this car in my LMS a few months back, and picked it up in the hope that it'd be a quick build, Heller's Bugatti T50. The T50 was produced in small numbers between 1930 and 1934, racing in the 24 hour Le Mans event between 1931 and 1935. (Sources: Wikipedia and Supercars.net) OT: interesting that Heller are advertising their ships in this box - I'm currently finishing off a wooden boat (Shallop), and eagerly awaiting a ship kit (HM Armed Cutter Sherbourne) that releases at midnight tonight ... both too early for this GB. Heller have kindly chrome (aluminium?) plated one sprue. Why do car kits have this? The box was sealed, and makes no mention of the chrome, so there is no marketing value to the feature. That metal plating will need stripping.

An old Aurora-Heller kit from 1977, I finished this kit in November of 2022. This was still before I was adding any weathering detail to my models, but by this point I had gotten a good handle on using my airbrush, masking off details and generally improving my paint skills. I would probably do the mottling a little different now, but I'm still happy with this kit overall. Painted nearly entirely with AK Real Colors. I usually like to do a quick write-up when I post these on my social accounts, so I will start pasting those here as well (unless that is frowned upon; let me know if so). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The 109K was the last Messerschmitt Bf-109 series fighter to see large scale production and use during the Second World War. The 109s were one of the main backbones of the Luftwaffe during the war, and one of the most advanced fighters of the time. In typical German fashion, there were variants produced constantly in order to keep up with Allied advancements, and the 109s stayed effective throughout. The 'K' variant was the last operational Bf109, created with the intention of streamlining the long list of previous variants into one. This model is specifically the plane of Erich Hartmann, the most successful fighter ace of all time, with 352 Allied craft being shot down credited to him. Known as The Blonde Knight of Germany, Hartmann was only 18 years old when he joined the Luftwaffe, and was not a member of the Nazi Party. After the war he was convicted of war crimes by a Soviet military tribunal, but was released in 1955, and acquitted of all charges in 1997, three years after his death, by the Russian Federation, who stated he was wrongly convicted. After Hartmann's release, he began training US airmen and flight instructors, but was forced into an early retirement after being outspoken about the F-104 being an unsafe aircraft, at which point he became a civilian flight instructor (the F-104 later went on to suffer from many technical issues resulting in non-combat crashes and over a hundred pilots dying in non-combat missions due to the jet's faults). Erich Hartmann died in 1993.

Hi, this was a spontaneous purchase as it was on sale while I got some other kits. I am waiting for Mach 2 to rerelease their Vostoks, so I can keep going with my "1st of" series. But another rocket cannot hurt It's plain out of the box. I even stuck with the instructions, which didn't go to well with the decals IMHO. Not a lot of detail, even for 1/125 and I briefly considered to detail it myself - and then opted for a quick an easy build. Still, looks ok in the showcase .... As always, thanks for looking, comments welcome. Cheers Here is the rest of my space collection https://photos.app.goo.gl/DLrnifbiBdBnwxfF7 and SciFi https://photos.app.goo.gl/75G5di2pDGK5bh1S9

Right, a Javelin Jambalaya, and not in the Cajun meaning of the word. I won't be making a stew for dinner. I have three kits of the Javelin (EDIT - four), the Heller T.3, the Airfix "FAW.9" (and that's in quotes for a reason as we will soon see), the Plastyk FAW.9, and the Novo/Frog FAW.9 all in glorious 1:72 scale. Thank the woman above that I don't need to add crazy detail like I did on that big Spitfire. So let's see what we have as raw materials - first, the Airfix "FAW.9" which I purchased at a model show swap meet, but was in its original package and still sealed. The Javelin Illuminati among us (they come out occasionally and are dreadfully frightening) will immediately notice that the grey sprues are in fact those from the Heller T.3 kit, with the tailcone removed from the sprue on the right in the second photo. However, the white and clear sprues are indeed from the Airfix FAW.9 version of the Javelin. Everyone knows that the original T.3 tooling was modified to produce the FAW.9, and it seems that Airfix have mistakenly packaged surplus T.3 sprues (but correctly snipping off the tailcone) in my kit. Oops. It would be rather difficult at this stage to make an FAW.9 out of this kit. But I also have this kit from Plastyk in Poland: I'm told that this kit is based on the second Frog tooling of the Javelin, but I don't have that so I can't compare. The sprue layout bears no resemblance to the Frog kit as seen here in the Frog Museum. I've seen a few very nice builds of this kit, but it is quite basic. So maybe. Now, I also have one of these babies, along with a Print Scale decal sheet to replace the nicely curled and yellowed one that was unearthed at some archaeological dig and packaged with the plastic: The sprues from the Heller kit look just like the Airfix sprues above, except they're in a yukky silver styrene and, of course, include the correct T.3 tailcone. Oh, right, aftermarket. I've assembled some, but maybe not enough. What to do? If I had another T.3 tailcone, I could build two T.3s and an FAW.9, but I really don't need to have three Javelins in my display case. Two sounds like a good number. I'll give this some thought and make a plan. The Airwaves airbrake PE set is designed for the Heller/Airfix kit, but might be useful for Plastyk. I will need another to make two models. The other Airwaves set is for the Airfix FAW.9, but could most likely be used on a T.3 and few would notice. I don't think there is a set for the T.3 like this, so I would need another of those too. More aftermarket tyres and pitot tubes will be easy to acquire. Oh, I suspect I will need to source some ejection seats. Martin-Baker Mk.3J for the FAW.9, but which mark for the T.3? The easiest route is to build a T.3 from the grey Airfix sprues (I hate that silver styrene in the Heller kit) and an FAW.9 from Plastyk. Easy is a relative term here, as the Plastyk kit looks like it need a lot of help, where the Heller kit maybe needs just "some" help. First, though, I want to find some layout drawings that are reasonably correct to see what I'm starting with. I have the stencil placement drawing that came with the Airfix 1:48 kit, and I suspect that is pretty good for an FAW.9. Drawings for the T.3 I'm still looking for. I'm not sure why I always make things difficult for myself, but I think this will be a fun project! Cheers, Bill PS. I do like the fancy paint job on that red and white FAW.9. I'm a stickler for that kind of stuff.

Hi everyone, well I did not finish this Etendard IV M in the Heller GB that just ended. Not by a long shot. So I am carrying on and hopefully can finish it in the next few weeks. Here is the WIP to date: Here is the state of the build at this moment: The re-scribing is almost over and sometimes next week fuselage halves and wings can be glued together once I have dealt with some work on the exhaust area. The decals are a bit yellowed and are going to be stuck behind my shed window (when the sun returns, which may take a while!). The crest of the 59S Flotilla is a terribly poor representation and has to be trashed (Shame on you Heller!). I found a possible very nice replacement on an Alize decal sheet. Just need to check the size... So things are in motion... Talk to you soon with some progress. JR

Hi guys, this is the final reveal of the 1/8 Heller BMW R750/5, which my friend asked me to build for his elder brother and some pics of the real bike. His brother who is now 57 bought the bike when he was 19 and toured Europe on his Honeymoon!

Some time ago, I can't remember if it was spring of 2021 or earlier, I started a 'quick' project involving a few T-6 builds: I like this subject a lot and already have a few built to which I wanted to add more. Unfortunately, as it often happens, this transformed in a lenghty/stalled/frozen project, mainly due to building kits of three different makes which had different issues to solve. In the end I had to face this as three separate builds to make some progress and here I am hoping to complete the whole project. The first iteration is an Heller T-6 in the last 'Red Chequers' livery, it is actually complete but for some reason I stopped before applying the final satin coat. Will have to remember the (surely good) reasons for that before doing anything and finding later why it was a mistake! While waiting for my brain cells to work on that, I present the second build, which is an Academy T-6 with the earlier 'Red Chequers' livery in silver/dayglo red and fern leaf roundels, also courtesy of a Ventura decal sheet. The third one for the moment I won't tell, just say it will be based on the Hobbyboss easykit. Cheers Fabio

SAAB Sk35C Draken F10, Angelholm, Sweden, 1980s Heller 1/72 conversion The Heller Draken kit contains a Danish two seater option so I initially thought I could produce the Swedish version without too much work - I was wrong! The Swedish version is based on the early Sk35A airframe which has the shorter rear fuselage compared with the later versions. I tried just cutting off the rear fuselage, but finished up rebuilding the whole area aft of the rudder hinge with Milliput. There are all kinds of other differences, such as a single centreline drop tank compared with two and a totally different fin tip.. The kit I used had a lot of plastic shrinkage on wings and fin so I started with a Milliput session and rubdown, followed by a lot of panel line scribing. At the same time I removed the control surfaces from the wings and repositioned them drooped as seems to be the case as the hydraulic pressure bleeds away. Also completely refurbished the cockpit interior and seats. Decals became a bit of an issue but I found numbers and Swedish crowns from the decal bank and made up the stencils from a combination of hand painting and donations from various Superscale sheets. The final result is small but colourful!

I'm looking for some opinions as to which 1/72 kit has the more accurate propeller blades, Heller or Italeri? Going a step further, what about the Airfix kit? It's the props themselves that I am interested in. I do not think that there are any other 1/72 kits out there (or real life aircraft) that used the same prop as the Ju.52. TIA.

Hi folk's I noticed looking through the magnificent number of kits already submitted a distinct lack of both French and Heller aircraft.Happy to correct that with this one,picked up for a tenner still in cellophane the Musee issue is on it's way,never seen or built this kit but researching on the net seems a well moulded and liked kit we'll see and might even do the Vichy scheme!

This is the Heller 1:72 Arado Ar 196A which was first manufactured in 1979 - I had found an original boxing at a model show a few years ago. I'd expected the kit to be rather basic, as compared to current kits, so I'd searched for some extras. Fortunately it had been re-boxed by Revell so I was able to get: - a photo-etch set from Eduard (very comprehensive and including a complete new cabin and really nice detail to add to the floats) - a replacement cowling from Quickboost (a single piece avoiding the difficult seam in the kit parts) - new exhausts from Quickboost (the kit does not provide exhausts) - a replacement gun for the navigator from Eduard (fantastic detail but ever so teeny) - decals from Kora for two schemes aboard the Tirpitz (I'd expected the kit decals to be almost unusable, because of their age, but in fact they were missing) During the build I also bought a 'transport trolley' from Kora. I thought a floatplane on a trolley would look rather different - although buying it did change my weathering approach. I had originally thought of a heavily weathered plane as aboard Tirpitz but settled on an 'as new' approach showing the floatplane as if it had just rolled out and was ready for its' pre-delivery test flight. I did a WIP thread which is here: The proportion of p.e. to plastic was a new one for me and a challenge at times but I'm happy with the end result and if anyone has this kit I would definitely recommend the Eduard set. Here's the photos. all the best Mark The Eduard replacement cabin: The transport trolley - a little resin kit from Kora: Thanks for looking Mark

This is a project that is sure to feel very nostalgic for some, as the kits i have in the bench at the moment, date back to the 60's and 70's. Personally, i don't think ive ever actually bought a Heller kit (might have gotten some Heller plastic in a different brand of box tough), tough ive seen some around and have been aware of the brand. But thanks to Glow2B and them reviving the brand, i can right that wrong, and have my own taste of some fine French vintages. As for how fine these will be, we shall see. But if nothing else, i got this small fleet for less that what a new Trumpeter 1/350 battleship would cost (like the O-class). And i can guarantee i will have quite a bit more fun doing these as-well. Even if the level of detail will be a little low in comparison. And to further increase my enjoyment, i will be painting these in a rather more custom and colorful paint scheme that hopefully shouldn't bee too wild/out of place. My only bit of aftermarket detailing, is some of those 1/350 scale human shaped cardboard cutouts. They might be really simple compared to the newer 3D-printed stuff, and slightly out of scale. But i think that for this project, they ought to be a weirdly perfect match. Oh, and Ive already got the aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle and the submarine Le Redoutable in order , and i hope eventually we get to see many more of these kit's, as from what i was able to find, there where quite a few back in the day. So, ought to be an absolute delight, and but a light snack compered to the PE infested kit's of today