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A German also-ran: The Heinkel He-51


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The 1930s was a hugely interesting decade for a lot of different reasons, not least because of the incredible speed in which aeroplanes developed. Torn between the age of the biplane and the new times, the unfortunate He-51 was basically outdated as soon as the paint dried on its wings, like so many other designs from the early to mid 1930s.
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Shipped to Spain to prove itself it had a very short period with success against even more outdated planes, but had to be withdrawn as a fighter plane before it embarrassed the Third Reich further and redeployed as a ground attack aircraft.


It did find some success there and was eventually produced in a pretty impressive 722 examples, which lingered on as advanced trainers and perhaps factory protection for the first years of the war.

As a ground attack plane it got its only nickname, "Caza de Cadena" or "Chain Fighter", after the way they attacked ground targets, coming in one by one to draw fire away from the plane that had just finished its attack.

 

A pretty boring nickname for a fighter I guess few remembered fondly, or even at all. :unamused:

 

But still, it is from the 1930s interwar period that I enjoy very much, and while in my eyes not as pretty as some people think due to its somewhat bulbous cro-magnon forehead created by the BMW engine, it did appear in some handsome colour schemes.
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The kit is Rodens He-51 B.1, which is a nicely detailed kit I hope will go together well.  

It will be built mostly OOTB with after marked decals, a bit of Quickboost resin and other stuff, plus some amateurish scratchbuilding where needed.

 

So not really OOTB at all then.

 

 

 

Edited by Eivind Lunde
Because the title had a slightly different meaning without the hyphen :D
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This is the scheme I selected, He-51 A.1 3/JG 233 Wien Aspern 1938, in RLM 01 silver and RLM 24 blue, done by Printscale: 
40246769223_ab140daffa_b.jpg

 

Since it is an A.1 I need to backdate it, but I don`t think there is much visible difference between the A and B series. 

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I was able to find this: 

"The initial preproduction He-51A-0 fighter, first flown in 1933, equipped the Mitteldeutsche Reklamestaffel, (Central Germany Publicity Squadron), which would later become the core of Jagdgeschwader, JG132 "Richtofen," when the Luftwaffe was revealed to the rest of Europe in 1935.3Early accidents were laid to deficiencies in training rather than anything intrinsic to the design.

    The He-51B structure was strengthened, including twin-wire bracing of the landing gear, and a provision for a 50-liter drop tank beneath the fuselage was added. As production proliferated in 1936-37, so did the Jagdgeschwader mounted on the elegant-looking fighter, with their colorful unit markings."

 

http://www.aviation-history.com/heinkel/he51.html

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4 hours ago, clive_t said:

Watching with interest, I have the ICM kit of the float plane version.

Hoo boy- me too! I have both versions of the Hasegawa and ICM kits, but love the floatplane version best. Just waiting for those metal exhausts I saw previewed at H to be released, because I have given up trying to make the ones in the Hasegawa kit look  halfway decent!

Mike

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I built the ICM floatplane version early last year, the struts and rigging were a nightmare on the wings and the floats, also the plastic had a weird brittle feel to it. Oh and the decals weren't great. Didn't like the build or the kit, but the end result did look good.

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20 hours ago, Sturmovik said:

I was able to find this: 

"The initial preproduction He-51A-0 fighter, first flown in 1933, equipped the Mitteldeutsche Reklamestaffel, (Central Germany Publicity Squadron), which would later become the core of Jagdgeschwader, JG132 "Richtofen," when the Luftwaffe was revealed to the rest of Europe in 1935.3Early accidents were laid to deficiencies in training rather than anything intrinsic to the design.

    The He-51B structure was strengthened, including twin-wire bracing of the landing gear, and a provision for a 50-liter drop tank beneath the fuselage was added. As production proliferated in 1936-37, so did the Jagdgeschwader mounted on the elegant-looking fighter, with their colorful unit markings."

 

http://www.aviation-history.com/heinkel/he51.html

Yeah, I`m pretty sure it should be quite easy to make an A.1 out of the kit as I did some research on the differences a while back, but have forgotten all about it now.
And if not, well, then I will have a B.1 in A.1 markings on my shelf and be the laughing stock of everyone that notices it. :blush:

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So, the build has begun by skipping the suggestion in the instructions that you should start with the drop tank before moving on to the elevators, and going straight to the cockpit part.

Glueing the framework and other parts together did not cause any problems, but I hate the toylike thickness of most injected moulded levers, so that will have to be dealt with.
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I did some research into cockpit colours and sprayed the cockpit Vallejo RLM02 as suggested in the instructions, and the instrument panels RLM66 as suggested elsewhere.
The cockpit is pretty detailed, but the instrument panels are a bit of a let down with only empty rings to suggest where the instruments are, and no details or needles/pointers.
Unfortunately I forgot to take any "before" pictures, but I`m sure you have all seen this before. So I used some Airscale instrument bezels and decals to add some detail, mostly to the upper blind flying panel since the lower panels have so small instruments that neither bezels or decals would fit.


The lower panels looks kinda boring, but so does the real thing according to the one picture I have of it.
This is with the kit lever part attached and the smaller instruments just filled in with black and gloss paint. The lever will need to go on a diet to look more like the real thing.
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The blind flying panel is all Airscale now, and while I am not all that happy with the low resolution of the decals (surely we could get more HD like decals nowadays?), the overall improvement is noticeable.

32278255907_fb63330a27_b.jpg

 

Next up: Messing a bit more with the cockpit, and gaining strength to deal with the photo etched AML seatbelts.  

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You can get a very good resin cowel top and exhausts for this kit. I used them on mine and they made a big improvement. I had a good model until I made the mistake of trying to rig it using thin CA glue. By the time it was rigged it was a major mess and had one wooden strut.

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20 hours ago, Greg Law said:

You can get a very good resin cowel top and exhausts for this kit. I used them on mine and they made a big improvement. I had a good model until I made the mistake of trying to rig it using thin CA glue. By the time it was rigged it was a major mess and had one wooden strut.

Yeah, I`m buying the exhaust for sure. The top cowl will fix the carburettor air intake which is not quite correct after what I understand, but I`m not going to spend too much time or money on this.


Why didn`t CA glue work for you?

I have rigged several models with EZ line and CA glue, and while the EZ line can split and curl in contact with CA I have just tried again because I find it invaluable to have it stick so quickly when rigging. Not to mention the strong bond it gives.

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The framework of the cockpit slightly weathered with a wash, and with some new levers made from stretched sprue dipped in superglue to get the ball handle. They are much thinner than the originals, and looks a bit better IMO. The instrument box has gotten some Airscale treatment too.
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About half the time I spend on building is spent on the carpet looking for parts, so why should this be any different?
I painted the handle that I guess is used to retract something (the flaps I guess since this plane has a fixed landing gear) and when left to dry I started to work on the framework. I forgot that I had placed the handle to dry completely while rested on one of the sprues, cleaned up the desk by putting the sprue back into the box, and spent 10 minutes in vain looking for it on the floor.
It could be basically everywhere by now, even in another city for all I know, so I need to recreate it from scratch.  :headbang:
The red oval marks the spot of the missing part:
46507434054_66aaf83e0a_b.jpg

Edited by Eivind Lunde
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7 minutes ago, Eivind Lunde said:

It could be basically everywhere by now, even in another city for all I know, so I need to recreate it from scratch.  :headbang:
The red oval marks the spot of the missing part:
46507434054_66aaf83e0a_b.jpg

You might as well evade scratching a new part if it's not going to be seen once the model is finished.

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22 hours ago, Eivind Lunde said:

Yeah, I`m buying the exhaust for sure. The top cowl will fix the carburettor air intake which is not quite correct after what I understand, but I`m not going to spend too much time or money on this.


Why didn`t CA glue work for you?

I have rigged several models with EZ line and CA glue, and while the EZ line can split and curl in contact with CA I have just tried again because I find it invaluable to have it stick so quickly when rigging. Not to mention the strong bond it gives.

I don't know for sure. All I know is when I use the Zap thin CA 95% of the time it would take half an hour to get one end to stick. This was on two models. But when I switched to Zap-a-gap I got it to stick as you see in videos. By that time I had badly damage both planes. I was using EZ line. It was very disheartening particularly as one of the models was a birthday present from one of my girls.

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On 27/02/2019 at 21:42, Sturmovik said:

You might as well evade scratching a new part if it's not going to be seen once the model is finished.

Yep, unfortunately it will be seen, and also bring some needed detail to the cockpit. But I`m pretty sure I can get away with it by just bending some sprue into shape, and if not, it shouldn`t take to long making something even for an amateur like me.

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A bit more progress, and I`m really close to finishing the cockpit and to glue the fuselage together now. The seat came out fine, the unpainted AML Luftwaffe seatbelts got a lick of sand colour followed by a wash of red brown which worked surprisingly well.

I remade the missing part by bending some stretched sprue and adding a grip from superglue, and that took half the time I spent under the table looking for the part. And it is much thinner and scale like in appearance too, so while a bit primitive, it isn't too bad.
I added a prominent placard from an Airscale sheet and made a simple recreation of the tube that runs along the edge of the cockpit (not sure what it is, any ideas?) from stretched sprue.
33406826978_fd6e783f60_b.jpg

Both are very visible in this original cockpit drawing:
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Test fitting the framework and seat, I painted the tubes semi gloss as metal usually is gloss and it also makes it stand out a little against the matt RLM02 cockpit side.
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I sure hope the cage with the seat and everything will fit nicely into the fuselage without creating noticeable gaps on either side, very close to finding out now!  :fingerscrossed:

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Of course. I found a photograph of the exact plane I`m modelling with the cockpit door open, and the door is obviously plain metal and at least parts of the rest of the cockpit seems to be light grey, not RLM02. 
46575406284_4bb8c71520_b.jpg

Could the inner fuselage have been unpainted metal (except some sort of clear lacquer), and the framework and cockpit details light grey?


 

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Well, it is too late to do anything about this now. I just have to accept that the real plane had different interior colours than mine, even though it irritates me no end knowing about it. :headbang:

I guess I can calm myself with the knowledge that a lot of the cockpit details just casually resembles the drawings from the instruction book, so obsessing about it is just silly. And a quick Google search shows a lot of people has done the same mistake of following the painting instructions, so I am in good company.
 

Cockpit framework finished. It was a bit annoying getting all the tubes to align, but taking it one at a time made it quit easy. I also added a bit of simple detailing but you`d need an endoscope or something to see most of it when the fuselage is closed up, so I guess it is just for my own peace of mind.

46578802824_fbf5c647fa_b.jpg

 

Glued to the left fuselage side and with the blind flying instrument panel in place, the cockpit looks pleasantly busy.

47249614192_8d56b2e218_b.jpg

 

 

Edited by Eivind Lunde
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  • 2 weeks later...

Not much work done lately , but I have at least glued the fuselage halves together.

47353427162_24fff5d71f_b.jpg
The fit is pretty good but unfortunately the upper part of the fuselage framework is visible through the door opening, which it shouldn't be. 
So another lesson learned, I should have scratchbuilt something to replace the kit frames and painted the interior light grey with perhaps bare metal fuselage insides as this may be more correct for the A version at least.
 

But learning by constantly doing mistakes is fun, right?

Right?

 

The underside with the clever fixed gear solution, the faired legs are moulded with the fuselage and the inside half of them is added to the joint fuselage, thus making a perfect joint to the fuselage and a very strong gear at that.
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The fit is not so good though. Prioritizing a good (visible) wing root fit over a good, but difficult to see, fit under the fuselage will leave you with a bit of puttying and sanding to smooth it out.

 

 

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Some general glueing and sanding brings it closer to the painting stage. 

33582683278_5377c4b167_b.jpg

 

A great tip I read somewhere was to cut an opening in the circle that holds the wheel inside the wheel pants, that way you can add the wheels when everything's painted and done :thumbsup:
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Speaking about painting, the plane is to be done in overall RLM02 silver. Is there any way to break up the silver so that it does not look too monotone? 

Perhaps some shading in black?

 

Any tips more than welcome, as this is my first plane done in silver.

 

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38 minutes ago, Eivind Lunde said:

Is there any way to break up the silver so that it does not look too monotone? 

Perhaps some shading in black

Yes black is good but change the colors from panel to panel if you truly want it slightly different ? Black base overall, then blue in some panels, brown in others, possibly more colors ? Then paint light coats, building up your color till its all almost invisible ? This should give you a nice quilted effect of different panels. 

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