Heinkel 111P-2, Airfix 1:72, plus some extras

[06/24]

Really nice progress

[TheBaron]

That's all coming along ve-ry nicely Ian. Thanks for the shout out on the gun mounting! Any thoughts on how you're going to build the actual sling part? I'm going to try and lash something together on mine from Luftwaffe seat belts and foil...

Tony

[CedB]

Very nice work Ian, especially all the brass enhancements - great stuff

[Brandy]

7 hours ago, Courageous said:

My partner calls this 'mans eyes', happens to me all the time...and every other bloke on the planet.

Going 'great guns' their Ian, carry on the good work.

 

Stuart

I don't think that applies Stuart. I spotted it from about 5 feet away, as I walked into the room!

 

Ian

[Brandy]

6 hours ago, TheBaron said:

That's all coming along ve-ry nicely Ian. Thanks for the shout out on the gun mounting! Any thoughts on how you're going to build the actual sling part? I'm going to try and lash something together on mine from Luftwaffe seat belts and foil...

Tony

The sling is also in the PE set, so I'll see how that looks before trying anything else.

 

4 hours ago, CedB said:

Very nice work Ian, especially all the brass enhancements - great stuff

Thanks Ced!

Ian

[Hamden]

 

 Just found this build, what a difference the PE makes!

 Mind if I follow along as well I'll sit quietly in the corner by the bar

 

    Roger

[BIG X]

2 hours ago, Hamden said:

 

 Just found this build, what a difference the PE makes!

 Mind if I follow along as well I'll sit quietly in the corner by the bar

 

    Roger

THERES A BAR???  ...have they got Stella???

[Brandy]

6 hours ago, Hamden said:

 

 Just found this build, what a difference the PE makes!

 Mind if I follow along as well I'll sit quietly in the corner by the bar

 

    Roger

Not at all Roger, in fact I'll join you for a quick pint before continuing!

 

3 hours ago, BIG X said:

THERES A BAR???  ...have they got Stella???

I would imagine the bar has whatever you desire! 

 

Right then, pint quaffed, on we go!

 

 The last piece of internal detail I wanted to add before throwing some paint at it, was the foot rest (I assume that's what it is!) for the upper gunner. It is included in the PE set, but since it should be round in section I decided it had to be scratched from brass rod. The framework on the bulkhead is not, for some reason best known to Airfix, actually moulded into the part, (although the surrounding framework is!) so that was added first using scrap bits of strip. I marked out the position of the braces using the PE part as a guide, then drilled the required holes and inserted .016" brass rod. It was almost exactly that easy.....the vertical supports were done first and clipped to length then the rest were added using those as reference. A couple of pieces bent at right angles formed the front brackets, and then I had to make the ring itself. the tricky bit! I heated the brass up so it kept its shape and didn't spring back, then bent it around a suitably sized piece of plastic (actually one of those round tubes that spare knife blades come in!). That was CA'd into place, et voila!

 

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I think that looks a heck of a lot better than the rather anaemic PE part!

 

Once it had set properly, the rear part between the supports was snipped off and CA'd to the top of the right hand side in the open position.

 

 

After having done all that, I thought I'd see if any of it will actually be visible....the side windows are pretty small, so here's what it looks like through the gunner's opening

 

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 I think we're getting close to painting this lot now.....

Thanks for looking in folks, I'm off for another pint!

 

Ian

 

 

 

 

Edited December 28, 2017 by limeypilot

[Brandy]

Not much done in the last couple of days I'm afraid, due mainly to the fact that when I got home on Friday night I felt like crap so went straight to bed. 5 minutes later I was out of bed and into the bathroom.....that sequence repeated every 30 minutes or so until almost 1am, when I finally got to sleep. Needless to say, yesterday was also spent mainly in bed.

I'm feeling slightly more alive today, although I don't think I'll be going out anywhere tonight! 

 

So to the last update of 2017...parts you've already seen before, but now a different colour!

 

 

 

 

Happy New Year everyone!

Ian

 

 

[TheBaron]

A splendid final  instalment to set the scene for the New Year Ian.

I hope you're feeling better now.

Best wishes for 2018.

Tony

 

[hendie]

I'll just sneak in here at the back in the forlorn hope that no-one notices I am late (again). Though my excuse is that I missed it 'cos it's only got half the amount of wings you normally build with.  Where are you going to tie up all the other ends of the rigging?

 

Nice build!  Looks like you are off to a stonker of a start with this. I am particularly enamored of your skills with the rods of brass - very nice work.

It seems like the skill level of BMers in general has been kicked up a notch over the last year or so and there are a number of fantastic builds going on just now. This certainly looks to be joining the ranks of my go to threads

 

[CedB]

Happy New Year Ian!

Nice work and hoping for more of the same in 2018

[Hamden]

 

Nice paint work on the inside.

Hope your feeling better Wishing you all the best for 2018

 

     Roger

[Brandy]

On 12/31/2017 at 6:34 PM, hendie said:

It seems like the skill level of BMers in general has been kicked up a notch over the last year or so and there are a number of fantastic builds going on just now. This certainly looks to be joining the ranks of my go to threads

I would have to agree Hendie, and I sincerely believe it's due to the helpful and friendly nature of the forum members, in sharing ideas and encouraging the expansion of other members' skill sets - the latest forays into the the dark arts of alchemy/chemistry/metallurgy being a great example! I have the necessary equipment myself, and am indeed getting more and more tempted to look for an excuse to try it! (Although I should really spend a little more effort on getting my airbrushing/weathering skills up to par first!)

Welcome aboard, btw!

 

On 12/31/2017 at 8:02 PM, CedB said:

Happy New Year Ian!

Nice work and hoping for more of the same in 2018

Thanks Ced, I'll do my bestestest!

 

19 hours ago, Hamden said:

 

Nice paint work on the inside.

Hope your feeling better Wishing you all the best for 2018

 

     Roger

Many thanks Roger, feeling much better today, so I finally got out and cleared the snow from the drive.....bed is MUCH warmer.......(it's 5F here today!)

 

I did however manage to delay the snow clearing until late afternoon, so I had a good session with this today. To start, I went for the "dark and stormy" look in the cockpit and painted the RLM66. I'm still not really sure about the RLM02 to be honest, it's the ModelMaster's Acrylic RLM02 but it looks more green than grey to me! Whatever it is, it's staying now anyway.

 

 

 

and then a brush coat - or three - on the moulded details. This stuff doesn't like being brushed, even more so than Tamiya! Keep the thinners handy to dip your brush in or it just won't work!

 

 

I could then start on the rather time consuming process of adding the real difference makers - the printed PE bits!

 

 

 

Needless to say I lost a couple of pieces! The control levers on the centre console went awol, followed by the T-handles on the top of the same piece. They will be replaced by thin wire and probably look better for it.....I hope! Of course the colours on the printed parts didn't match the colour I had painted the rest of the moulded part, so that will also have to be adjusted. Although to be honest, none of it will be visible anyway!

 

 Still more PE to go, but I now need to put a little more thought into the build sequence before ploughing ahead.

 

Thanks for looking in!

Ian

[Stew Dapple]

That's top quality work Ian, she's coming along nicely

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[CedB]

Seconded! Great stuff Ian

[Brandy]

Thanks gents!

 

 A little more done today but not too much worthy of pics.

 The main progress was in giving the interior a wash (a first for me, still trying to get used to how to make it work). OK on the green interior, but not so happy with the grey up front....

 I put in a couple of bits of copper wire to represent some wiring and make it a little more lifelike and then attached the centre bulkhead and floor.

 

 

 After that, I put together the bomb bay, That was the first terrible area as far as fit was concerned, and the joints needed a lot of filling and sanding. A touch up on the interior paintwork was the last job for the night.

 

Thanks for looking in!

 

Ian

[AdrianMF]

Smashing work on the interior! Your 3D bits and the coloured PE are very effective.

 

Regards,

Adrian

[CedB]

Lovely interior Ian - good great job

[TheBaron]

That interior is really beginning to pop forth now Ian in a most vigorous fashion. 

I do agree that the cockpit does look significantly greyer than RLM02 in the photograph, whereas the rear looks spot on.

[woody37]

Lovely progress Ian

 

[Brandy]

15 hours ago, TheBaron said:

That interior is really beginning to pop forth now Ian in a most vigorous fashion. 

I do agree that the cockpit does look significantly greyer than RLM02 in the photograph, whereas the rear looks spot on.

That could be due to the fact that the cockpit is actually RLM66....... if 02 was green grey then it's ok, if it was light grey, like the Norwegian restoration, It's wrong. Either way it ain't getting changed!

 

Ian

[Brandy]

On 1/2/2018 at 10:43 PM, AdrianMF said:

Smashing work on the interior! Your 3D bits and the coloured PE are very effective.

 

Regards,

Adrian

Thanks Adrian! Some of the PE had to be replaced, simply because it was really no improvement. Particularly where it should be more 3d, as you say. Another bit bites the dust below..

 

On 1/3/2018 at 1:31 AM, CedB said:

Lovely interior Ian - good great job

Cheers Ced!

 

On 1/3/2018 at 7:08 AM, woody37 said:

Lovely progress Ian

 

Thanks Woody, and here's some more.....

 

 I have had rather a lot of time on this over the last 2 days, mainly due to a bloody great storm that attacked the NE USA. We on Cape Cod didn't get it anywhere near as bad as some, the winds only reached about 50mph, and there wasn't much snow, but it certainly wasn't flying weather! Today we are left with the huge amount of rain we got, plus what little snow did fall, frozen solid. So no flying to day either as the airports are nothing more than big ice rinks.

   Yesterday was spent dealing with a multitude of small details, Folding up 25 PE spare magazines for the MGs was one task!

 

But before I did too much, I had to take care of an annoying glitch. The PE parts for the centre console and the pilot's side console are slightly wider than the parts they fit on, which leaves an overhang. To cure that i added a thin piece of card to each piece and sanded them down to the same width as the PE.

 

Here's the centre console, before

 

 

and after

 

 

I then added the levers that I had lost previously, made up from .008" brass wire.

 

 

Today they got painted

 

 

I'm happy with that, they may even be better than the PE!

 The other PE part I replaced looks like a compass for the bombardier, and is a flat piece, but shouldn't be. I made up a new frame from brass rod before I removed the PE one, then I cut the compass part out and mounted it to a piece of 2.5mm plastic rod.

 

 

I also made up a new frame for the folding seat while I was at it....

 

 

Again, nothing mind blowing, or even difficult, but lots of "bang for my buck"!

 

Needing something a little less eye-straining, I attached the completed bomb bay sections to the wing centre section and touched up the paintwork

 

 

Then I found another gotcha which I should have noticed much earlier but didn't. When the cockpit is fully assembled, with the wing centre section attached, there is a huge gap either side into the wing section!

 

 

I'm not quite sure what Airfix were thinking here (or more likely, not thinking!) but these absolutely have to be blanked off! Out with the plastic card and some blanks were made up and fitted. It would, of course, have been MUCH easier if I'd done this right back at the start......

 

 

 

I did scrape some plastic of the fuselage sides to help try and let the blanks in, but even so, it took two or three attempts, after priming each, to finally get them to a state that I was happy with. They are not highly visible when everything is in place, but a huge hole most definitely is!

 

 

 

So after that was all painted up, I decided I needed to paint the MG magazines I'd spent over an hour yestarday folding, and that meant I may as well do the Eduard MG's as well

 

They really are very nicely moulded. Here's a close up of one (there are 4 in a set) and include some resin mags, but those are WAY too small, so I'll be using the PE ones I'd just folded! (with 25 in the PE set, there are plenty of spares!). They take a bit of careful cleaning up with a sharp scalpel, but really look the part. I have a Ju87 and Me110 in the stash, and bought MiniWorld guns for those, which really are the d's b's - not cheap, but, in my opinion, worth every penny!

 

 

The gunmetal paint is darker than that, I lightened the pic up to better show the resin details.

 

Well, that's about it for 2 days work. A lot of time, a lot of squinting through the magnifier, and I still haven't added the engine controls that I wanted to do yesterday, bt I'm a whole lot closer to getting it closed up.

 

Must remember to add the handles to the MG mags tomorrow - I went to paint them and found my leather paint dried up!

 

Thanks for looking in!

 

Ian

 

 

 

 

[hendie]

interior is looking good Ian.

I know what you mean about the weather - it took me 5 attempts to get up my driveway last night (and three attempts at shoveling). Of course the wife's AWD just sailed up there without any problem.

 

and you are right - those levers look much better than anything PE could produce

[CedB]

Very nice Ian. Those added details are really worth the effort IMHO