Heinkel He 219A-6 - 1:144 Mark I Models

[Mig88]

Hello everyone

 

This is the first build I'm posting here and it's my latest kit finished just last weekend. It's a conversion of the Mark I Models 1:144 He 219A-5 into a A-6 "Mosquito-Jäger". This was a projected but unbuilt variant. This was an A-2/R2 with armour removed, no radar aerials and without flame dampeners.

My sample of the kit came with a lot of flash which meant plenty of cleaning up though this isn't the norm (I have others in my stash). Basic improvements involved the following:
- Moving the rear cockpit wall 4-5mm forward. I added a gunsight at the front.
- Making a recess for the lovely etched Peilgerät DF star instead of sticking it on top of the fuselage spine as suggested by the instructions. The clear cover was made with Kristal Klear.
- Opening gun and intake holes along the main wing leading edge. I also cut the slot for the landing light which was made from clear sprue. The intake hole in the tailplane was also opened up.
- The nose wheel leg was too long and I shortened it by 2mm or more.
- The shape of the spinners was wrong being bulbous and blunt and I sanded them to a more correct conical shape.
The main conversion point was adding exhausts. I found spare ones in an Eduard Spitfire IX double kit. I opened up holes for them, blanking them inside and gluing them in these slots.
All joints and seams needed sanding and some filler. I added weight but unfortunately it was insufficient, despite my tests which seemed to show there was enough, so the kit was glued to the nice card display base that came with the kit.
When I discovered this variant in the Valiant Wings book, I immediately had the idea of a machine without paint in a metal finish as with a Bf 109G-6 that was actually stripped of paint to gain speed precisely to hunt DH Mosquitoes. Decals came from the kit except for the red Ms and werknummers which I took from an A-2 kit, and the kills in the tail from my spares (Jach Lippisch P.20 sheet I believe). ALthough representing a plane from 2./NJG1, it is, of course, completely fictitious.
The Mark I Models He 219 is not an easy-build kit but with a little effort you can get a great result.

 

Thanks for looking

Miguel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a final note, I am posting these images from one of my albums in Google Photos. Please advise me if there are any problems. Thank you.

 

 

 

 

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Very well done 

[Bullmann]

Interesting scheme and nice to see someone building in this scale.

 

Looks to be fiddly business, Miguel.

[Mig88]

Thank you very much. Yes things got complicated once I added all the etched aerials, masts, probes, etc. And attaching the radio wires (stretched sprue) to an etched mast was tricky!

[Spitfire31]

Interesting and very good looking build in the microscopic scale!

 

Only thing is, in reality propellers don't have those damaged and "weathered" (for lack of a better word) blades! It's pure modellers' misguided imagination. If a plane had been worked hard in a desert environment with sand in the air, you might see a smooth thinning of the paint on the extreme leading edge and, in extreme cases, on the back of the tip. Big, irregular blobs of missing paint just look ridiculous. 😉

 

Kind regards,

 

Joachim

[F-32]

Very nicely done, looks really good!

[Mig88]

Thank you very much for your comments.

 

14 hours ago, Spitfire31 said:

Only thing is, in reality propellers don't have those damaged and "weathered" (for lack of a better word) blades!

Joachim, thanks for pointing that out. I took a better look at photos and you are right so I'm taking note. I confess that I normally make it more subtle but in this case the brush slipped too often and I no longer had the heart to minimise it after having had trouble varnishing the blades! Criticism graciously accepted!

 

Miguel