Hobby Boss Me262 A-2a 1/72

[Nomore Shelfspace]

Hello again, this is my latest one, a Me262 A-2a in 1/72 from the Hobby Boss range. First Hobby Boss kit I've built. I was impressed by the quality of the moulding, although I couldn't comment on accuracy. The nose looked a bit too sharp so I sanded it a bit... the 'easy assembly' generally amounts to a simplified airframe - fuselage and wings with a cockpit trapped in between - but the rest of an HB is quite sophisticated. I particularly liked the undercarriage. I wasn't sure about the rather stunted interior although it was a fair representation for what it was! I added a stick and belts, and some paint touches. The 'top and bottom' approach to assembly means you have a few less joints to fill, but fill them you must! The fuselage was a bit narrow on one side so I had to do a bit of filing as well to bring the bottom part of the fuselage into line. Filling and sanding was also needed around the nacelles. I use a combination of Humbrol putty and Deluxe Materials water-soluble putty, depending on the job. The top two gun ports need filling on this variant as well.

I had no RLM colours so had to mix my own from Humbrol (using a text guide I found here...) - not a great success at first. I also tried airbrushing the squiggly lines, which looked terrible to start with. For some reason I tried wiping down the paint with alcohol pre-injection swabs - this had the effect of smoothing out the grainy paint surface without actually removing it. From here I was able to respray the thing, and paint the squigglies by brush using something like RLM 02. I should have done the same swabbing to get rid of the graininess before decalling it, because as you can see, even after a brush coat of Klear I still had problems with silvering! The HB decals are ok but too glossy. (I retrospect I think using Microsol on decals has the effect of dissolving the adhesive, causing silvering when they dry out.). I used swastikas from an Xtradecal sheet instead of the "two halves" ones on the HB sheet.

I brush painted the intake lips, nose and fin tip markings - no way were the decals going to work on those...

While finishing this I got a set of the new Humbrol RLM enamels - I have yet to try them although I used them for retouching on this model. I imagined the squiggly camo was applied in the field, so overpainted the RLM 02 on some of the otherwise rather bright stencils, leaving the codes etc. clear.

The characteristic '262 loop aerial is missing from the kit so I made one from brass wire.

Before flat varnishing the model I noticed the decals had silvered badly so tried scoring them with a sharp blade and applying Humbrol Decalfix - bought along with the RLM's - this worked to a certain extent. I have used Decalfix in the past and found it more effective than anything else I must admit.

Well, there you go, one grainy Me262 mit der bombs! Kettenkrad is the old Hasegawa one by the way.

[Val]

Great model!

[pascal JMW]

Very Nice !

[Luftwaffe]

The camo you chose was for nightfighting and was applied aftermarket and as fabric paint aswell. I often had the experience too, that if I struggled with the paint like you did, it came out very well like your model. So great work! The only little problem you have there are the decals which are silvering.