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Mike

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Horton Ho.229
1:32 Zoukei-Mura


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The Horten brothers were a pair of visionary siblings that designed a series of flying wing gliders in pre-WWII during the period when Germany was prohibited from having an air force. Each design improved on the last, and once the Luftwaffe broke cover in the expansionist phase before WWII, development began in earnest. The requirement for a light bomber capable of the 3x1000 by the RLM, which was for an aircraft capable of carrying 1,000kg 1,000km at 1,000kph in 1943 set the wheels in motion that resulted in the Horten.IX, which is better known as the Ho.229, and sometimes referred to as the Go.229 due to the fact that the Gothaer factory had been chosen for production examples.

The flying wing had a low drag form, and the addition of two jet engines gave it the potential to fulfil the requirement, although it suffered a little from lateral instability due to its shape. The first prototype flew un-powered and with fixed landing gear in 1944, with results that bore plenty of promise before crashing due to a pilot error. Gotha altered the design in practical ways to ease production and increase longevity, as well as adding an ejector seat that was probably as much of a danger to the pilot as being shot down. Another prototype was lost due to an engine fire, but this did not deter the RLM from striving to reach production, despite the worsening situation for Germany in Europe. The third prototype was enlarged, and it was this that fell into the hands of the advancing US troops, and subsequently the Operation Paperclip boys, who took it back to America with plenty of other advanced designs. It remains there to this day, in the restoration area of the Smithsonian's NASM, and you can see some stunning photos and interesting text on their mini-site here.

The Kit
By heck, but there's been some hype about this kit, and a lot of people queued patiently at the recent SMW to receive the first batch that was available to the public. Thanks to the patience of one of our review team we have one on hand, and it is an amazing example of injection moulding technology that borders on art! With typical ZM style, the kit arrives in sleek box in the "house style" that fits in nicely with their other offerings such as the He.219 (another beautiful kit!). On the cover is a CGI rendering of a 229 shooting down a Lancaster, and in all honesty, it's not the most realistic or detailed painting, but is perfectly adequate for the job. No effort has been spared on the inside of the box though, which has an inner fold-back lid and a card divider within to help keep everything where it should be. If you've been following the buzz about this kit you'll already know that there is a substantial amount of clear plastic in the box, as the model is designed to be able to built with semi-transparent skin that shows the detail packed in underneath. Of course, you can always paint over that, and many of us will, but the option is there. There are seven sprues in clear styrene, and another twelve in grey styrene. There is another small sprue that was loose in my bag for the landing gear covers, but your box should have this inside. You should also note that ZM have noticed a mistake in the numbering of sprue R, which you can find out about here. All you need to do is re-number the parts on the sprues and everything will be ok. The package is rounded off with a set of canopy masks in a green material, a relatively large decal sheet, and of course the instruction booklet.

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If you haven't yet had the pleasure of perusing one of ZM's kits, the instruction booklet is a very handsome affair, with 3D drawings of the parts and plenty of accompanying hints, tips and explanations of what you're building. It is broken down into several episodes, and there are pictures of the completed article interspersed with the instructions, so you can compare your work against theirs. Whoever built the example kit did a lovely job of it, so we have a high standard to live up to!

You can of course treat yourself to some of the extras that are available from ZM, which includes pilot figures, ground crew, metal landing gear, resin wheels, brass barrels and an additional PE set to improve the detail still more! There is also a forthcoming conversion set that will let you build a two-seater, a set of Vallejo colours specifically formulated for the kit, plus a Concept Note book that should help with the build.

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Construction begins unusually with the two Jumo 004 engines, which have a full suite of eight compressor blades along the central shaft just like the real thing, which is trapped between the forward engine housing after adding the half-moon static blades within the shell first. Each pair is different, so much be installed in strict order, and care will be absolutely imperative if you hope to install the turbine shaft, as the cut-outs in the static blades match the shape of the hubs. The intake bullet is a two-part assembly with the front compressor face added to the rear, which is then trapped between a pair of cowling parts split vertically, plus another pair split horizontally in front of those, forming the inner intake lip. The exhaust has two final phase rotors attached to a spacer, which is in turn glued to a set of stator blades, and finally the rear bullet is put in place. The engine shell is then completed by adding a ring to the back of the compressor phase, linking the exhaust assembly to the rear of the turbine shaft, and lastly enclosing the shaft and part of the exhaust assembly in more cowling that joins horizontally. The outer casing can then be painted up as per the photo instructions. A lot of ancillary equipment comes with a jet engine, and ZM have not skimped on parts here. There are a heap of parts utilised in completing the engine, and painting call-outs accompany them throughout. The final part of the first act is to add the lower heat shields to the aft portion of the engine, which prevented the heat from damaging the relatively delicate wooden skin. These are provided in crystal clear styrene, so that your work with the engines can be seen from the gear bays. As an option, you can cut some square sectioned parts from the sprue runners, and build them up into a trestle for one or both engines either to display them away from the aircraft, or to keep them safe while you finish off the build. Quite a clever use of the otherwise wasted plastic of a sprue!

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Act two sees the building of the fuselage, which comprises a tubular framework that is very well depicted. The lower frame is built up first to act as the base on which the rest of the fuselage is built, and again you should paint this up as you go, due to the complexity of the finished article. The wing root formers are added to the extreme left & right of the fuselage frame, at which point it starts to look a bit like a Ho.229 for the first time. Various linkages and controls are added, reaching the forward fuselage to be integrated with the cockpit, which is built up later. The cannons and their ammunition feeds are added inboard of the wing joint, after which the engines are added into the lower fuselage assembly and held in place by the addition of the upper framework, so again – keep painting as you go along, or you'll regret it. Fitting this part properly is crucial, and takes up two pages of the instructions, showing where it should locate a number of times from different angles. Another page is devoted to showing the finished article in picture form, which should give you the feeling that if you screw it up, you will have trouble fitting the outer skin, so take care, test-fit and do it right the first time.

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The third act deals with the cockpit, the framework for which is painted RLM66, although the instructions suggest black, while the photos and general RLM practice says otherwise. The side frames are added first, which makes you realise just how close to the pilot the engines are, and how deaf he would probably get. The pilot's instrument panel is supplied as either a one-piece grey styrene, or a clear part, giving you the choice of how to achieve your desired effect. The styrene part is simply painted up and the supplied individual instrument decals added or the full panel decal, with a dot of gloss varnish added after to give the illusion of glass fronts. The clear part needs to be masked to retain the clear instrument faces, painted and then the decals are placed behind the panel with the use of either decal softening solutions as per the instructions, or a small quantity of clear acrylic varnish to improve adhesion of the wrong side of the decals to the clear plastic. Either should do the job, and a coat of white laid over the back of the panel, then a covering coat of grey/black will hide them from view. The panel is attached to the fuselage via a series of tubular frames, after which you install the control column, with the control linkages below the cockpit floor attaching to the bottom of the stick and latching onto pegs in the outer fuselage area. The ejector seat is made up later, and consists of only four parts due to the simplicity of its design, but it looks good nonetheless. You can use alternative seat bucket parts with moulded in belts, or a blank part if you are using aftermarket belts or installing a pilot figure. Other than the forward roll-over bar within the windscreen area and a piece of nose armour, that's all the creature comforts the pilot had, sitting exposed at the front of the flying wing, and deafened by the sound of his own engines.

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After the fixed landing gear of the first prototype was lost along with the airframe, retractable gear was installed in subsequent prototypes, with a huge balloon tyre at the front, and two more reasonably sized main gear legs toward the rear. These are the subject of section 4, and it begins with the build-up of the main gear legs, which have a one-piece main leg, separate oleo-scissor links, separate hubs, and two part tyres that have manufacturers' details and spec in raised lettering on the sidewalls. They install into sockets in the underside of the fuselage framework, and are joined with two retraction linkages, and brake hoses moulded in styrene, the location of which is noted in two scrap drawings to the side. The big nose gear leg is moulded in two halves, separated vertically, and its yoke surrounds the two-part tyre with separate hubs, with the mudguard and bracing hoop added after the wheel is installed. The substantial top of the leg is inserted into a large receiver in the nose, and a three-part retraction mechanism is added to the rear. This is also well documented with various views in scrap diagrams around the main construction stage. A final page shows everything installed and painted, then shows the correct angles for the assemblies once they are mated together. Measuring those angles yourself might be a bit tricky unless you hold your model up to the drawing and measure by eye.

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Act 5 sees the fuselage covered in those translucent outer panels that we mentioned earlier. You will need to make a decision of what to do about them around this stage, and choose whether to model it with a "ghost" skin, partially paint it, or go the whole hog and paint it completely. Of course, you could also go insane and depict your 229 unpainted using some of HGW's excellent wood effect decals. I'm finding that last option quite tempting as I write this, but I'm not paying for any therapy you might need if you go down that route! The first part of the fuselage to go in is an armoured panel that protects the pilot from frontal attacks, which sits inside the nose cone. The nose part itself is a work of styrene art, having been slide-moulded as one piece that incorporates the nose, engine intakes, forward cockpit sills and the outer fuselage leading edge. The lower fuselage skin is made up of three main parts, which fit onto attachment points moulded into the bottom of the fuselage framework, so care and careful gluing is the order of the day, especially if you are leaving any of the panels unpainted. The airbrakes and their actuating rams that cause them to slide out into the slipstream are added before the upper fuselage is closed up, and if you plan to depict them closed, you just nip off the jacks and clean up the stub, installing them flush with the outer skin. The upper fuselage is next, and this comprises a single large upper piece and separate crystal clear engine cowlings, to allow you to show off one or both of your engines. The metal jetwash panels are moulded in, and these are painted bare metal whenever you see fit, and would benefit from a bit of heat discolouration along the way. That's it – the fuselage is complete, but now you need wings.

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Section 6 deals with the wings, and by now you will know that ZM prefer to give you a distinctly engineering-style experience that involves building a simplified replica of the whole internals of the aircraft. As usual with the wings, there is a simplified version of the wooden internal structure in the shape of ribs and stringers that give the wing stiffness and allow the suspension of ancillary equipment within the framework. The main part is a single moulding, to which is added a more detailed inner end-profile. A set of four fuel tanks are added into the mid and leading edge of the inner two-thirds of the wing, and a single piece depicting the actuating mechanism for the outer flying surfaces. At this point you'd be forgiven for thinking that you should add the skin to the wing, but instead you attach the wing to the fuselage using a quartet of pegs for each one, each of which is attached to a small square of outer-skin. A couple of small parts glue directly to the lower wing skin before it is added, and then you fit the top wing, encasing the innards forever. All the control surfaces are poseable, with elevons along the trailing edge, the inner sections of which also act as flaps. On the top and bottom surface of the wing tips are the drag rudders, a set of paired spoilers than allow lateral direction change. Each one plugs into a slot in the underside of the wing skin, and can be posed closed by cutting off the actuators and gluing them flush with the outer skin. A number of scrap diagrams are there to help you get them sitting correctly, as well as a couple of photos of the finished article in the deployed position.

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The final phase involves adding all the small parts to the completed airframe. A pair of huge bay doors for the nose gear, two smaller captive doors each for the main gear plus tiny centrally mounted inner doors, and doors in the pen-nib tail for the drag-chute, all of which are best added after main painting is done. The Morane IFF antenna hangs down beneath the fuselage, slightly offset to port, and a DF loop is added to the rear spine, with pitot on the port wingtip. The 229's windscreen is extremely complex in shape, with compound curves on almost every surface, which appear to have been done well. It fits directly to the sill, and locates on a pair of pins in the roll-over bar, but be sure to install the one-piece gun-sight before you put it in place, as it will be a lot more difficult if you don't. The sliding canopy section has been well designed, and you are given two options for the outer skin. You can use the single piece clear canopy, or use a front clear section with a crystal clear aft section that has a central frame projecting from the front that fits along the top of the clear part in a slight recess. Either option then fits to a sub-frame to which the sliding mechanism is added on a cross-member – don't forget that there is a set of canopy masks to aid you with painting. The ejection seat and canopy are then added to the model without glue, the former sliding into place on two ejection rails. The canopy should be able to slide back and forth on its own rails too, giving you the option of open or closed canopy on a whim. Adding the gun barrel stubs to the holes in the leading edges of the wings outboard of the intakes and the clear wingtip lights means an end to construction.

Markings
There are two fanciful schemes included on the decal sheet, both based on the most likely A-0 series of airframes that were closest to reality. Both are in an RLM81/82 wavy camo scheme, with RLM76 on the undersides, differing only in their tail bands. Example A has a yellow/red band, while B has a blue/green chequer pattern. Anything other than the prototype schemes are mere speculation though, so the world is your oyster when it comes to markings choices. Note that there are no white outline swastika decals included, a pair of which can still be seen on the original airframe, but there are a pair of black ones split in half, to avoid issues when shipping the kits to Germany and other countries where the symbol is either banned or actively discouraged.

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The decals are well printed with good register, sharpness and colour density, although the instrument decals are a little dark with the needle and calibration details over-powered by the black, which may result in a rather drab panel. As well as the individual instrument decals, there is also a single decal with a full panel printed on it, so the modeller can apply it to the styrene panel and get it settled down with some decal solution. A few oblongs of yellow, blue and green are included for patching in of the tail bands if necessary, although there isn't any red supplied for example A. There are full sets of digits from 0 to 9 with two rows of white, yellow and red, and sections of the latter could be used to patch any gaps in the red tail bands if necessary. Masking and painting the bands is always an option though, as you have the decals to use as patterns for your masks.

Conclusion
This is another beautiful kit from Zoukei-Mura that just oozes quality from every part. Real care and attention has been lavished on the design of the kit, and the instruction booklet not only holds your hand through the build process, but also imparts quite a bit of knowledge during the process. I like to know what the name and function of the parts I'm gluing together are, and the instructions are more than happy to oblige. The instructions are almost unique (so far) in guiding you through the build as you would approach it from a modeller's perspective, which of course is their target market – these are not pocket-money kits by any stretch of the imagination.

Superb in every way – I struggle to find suitable words to recommend it highly enough without sounding sycophantic. It is the dictionary definition of awesome before it became diluted by overuse.

Buy at least one right now. Scratch that – get two, and put your name on the two-seat conversion set that's coming soon.

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Review sample courtesy of
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Thanks for the review Mike. It looks fantastic.

srmalloy posted this over on LSP re 229 conservation: https://hortenconservation.squarespace.com/paint/

Main page: https://hortenconservation.squarespace.com/

I have to do some serious penny saving for this kit but it will be worth it.

Edit: I hope that this is okay, but srmalloy also linked to this page on Jumo 004 engine. Plenty of detail for you super detailers out there: http://www.williammaloney.com/Aviation/AirVictoryMuseum/JunkersJumo004Turbojet/index.htm

Edited by Av8fan
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Must admit, it didn't really do anything for me at SMW, but after seeing this it looks a lot better. I doubt highly I will get a kit, but it would be good to see a few appear on here.... when are you building it Mike? ;)

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Well - speaking as a 1:48 kinda guy, this is one of my "scale breakers", because of the combination of subject matter and the superb way it's been handled. I just hope they keep on in the same direction & quality level :pray:

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That looks spectacular. Interesting idea to do the clear moulding, the cogs inside my head are turning now, I could really go for one of these. Perhaps I ought to build my 1/48th Dragon one first though!

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The 'cut away' build at Telford was by one of our club members, and it was at our club meet a couple of weeks back. Had the chance to get a good look at it. Superb piece of engineering. My scale too, but I have too much stuff to build anyway.

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Will get one when it comes out in the right scale. I have to admit though that I was surprised in Telford by how small it is even in 1:32.

One thing I find very odd is that they went down the length of including the whole compressor stator and rotor section, but then leave a gaping hole where the combustion chambers are supposed to go...but that's probably the only area that's slightly questionable about the kit.

Cheers

Jeffrey

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Not likely, but your bank might ;)

You'll be a happy man when the box arrives, so don't worry about the practicalities :wicked:


Well, once again, I really had no intentions to buy that kit....
That was before I read this review...

Sorry about that Antoine. No, you're right - I'm not sorry at all :wicked:

My nomination for kit of the year if I'm honest, and there has been some sterling competition from all sides, really. All I can say is that we're now in the Platinum age of modelling. Gold is so last season dahling! ;)

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I think we weren't on their review panel when the Skyraider came out, sadly. I certainly don't have one, although Dave might have dug into his own pocket for one maybe? :shrug:

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The 'cut away' build at Telford was by one of our club members, and it was at our club meet a couple of weeks back. Had the chance to get a good look at it. Superb piece of engineering. My scale too, but I have too much stuff to build anyway.

Sorry just a bit confused by your post. What does "I have too much stuff to build anyway" mean. :)

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Thank you Dave!!!!

I've only got the original Navy version Antoine if that's ok? I'll get with it once I've caught up a bit on the current review pile.

BTW just to add what Mike has been saying, the 229 is a fabulous kit, I was well chuffed when my example arrived, even though I had had a sneak preview of Mike's kit when I popped by after Telford.

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