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A German also-ran: The Heinkel He-51


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12 minutes ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

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. 

Thanks, good stuff. But this plane is mostly not metal, but just fabric painted silver. So there are not many metal panels, and those that exist are just painted RLM01.
So what would you suggest to break up a painted silver surface? Would it even need breaking up, or would it appear as single colour without the variation you`d get on a say, black or olive drab coloured plane?

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I would think a doped surface might stay relatively unifom. Possibly staining from oil/grease/fuel maybe. The uppers would be slightly duller from sun fade. The lowers would get some color streaking from dirt/debris, that had been kicked up by the landing gear ?

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1 hour ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

I would think a doped surface might stay relatively unifom. Possibly staining from oil/grease/fuel maybe. The uppers would be slightly duller from sun fade. The lowers would get some color streaking from dirt/debris, that had been kicked up by the landing gear ?

Yup, I think you are right. Sounds plausible. I may mix in a little bit of grey to slightly dull the Vallejo RLM01, as it is very silvery as is.

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Hello Eivind,

Great job on your Heinkel !!

I agree with my cousin advice !!

Then you can also try matt and semi gloss varnishes to have some slght differences on your silver doped surfaces.

Did you ever tried the Flory productions ? I learn about it on this forum !!

And now I'm an addict !!

Sincerely.

CC

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On 2/25/2019 at 8:41 PM, Eivind Lunde said:

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

While I'm by no means an expert on early Luftwaffe colour schemes, are you sure about the RLM 01 silver? Any He 51 photos I've seen where the colours are mentioned are described as being painted in RLM 63, a light grey (and look like that to my eye at least). Also, any builds I've seen online mention RLM 63 as the basic overall colour applied.

 

At the same time, it's your model, so you can paint it any way you like - just thought I'd mention it.....nice job on the interior, by the way!

Edited by hopkp
Grammar!
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21 hours ago, hopkp said:

While I'm by no means an expert on early Luftwaffe colour schemes, are you sure about the RLM 01 silver? Any He 51 photos I've seen where the colours are mentioned are described as being painted in RLM 63, a light grey (and look like that to my eye at least). Also, any builds I've seen online mention RLM 63 as the basic overall colour applied.

 

At the same time, it's your model, so you can paint it any way you like - just thought I'd mention it.....nice job on the interior, by the way!

The Print Scale sheet says RLM01 + RLM24 blue for the nose. But every other model I`ve seen in the pre-war scheme is, as you say, grey. 

The picture I have posted on the first page of the plane in question could be grey, or silver, after looking (well, staring) at it for some time I guess I`d say grey is more likely. 

And I guess it would be unusual for one plane, or one squadron for that matter, to be painted in an out of regulation colour. So I think you are on to something here!
 

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On 25/03/2019 at 21:44, corsaircorp said:

Hello Eivind,

Great job on your Heinkel !!

I agree with my cousin advice !!

Then you can also try matt and semi gloss varnishes to have some slght differences on your silver doped surfaces.

Did you ever tried the Flory productions ? I learn about it on this forum !!

And now I'm an addict !!

Sincerely.

CC

Yeah, I`ve heard about the Flory washes. Do you use them for panel lines, or can they be used to make a slight variation of a colour too?

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17 hours ago, Eivind Lunde said:

Yeah, I`ve heard about the Flory washes. Do you use them for panel lines, or can they be used to make a slight variation of a colour too?

I used it for both panel accent and variation slight or not since you use it at will

if it's too much a bit of moisturized towel and it's cleaned up.

Then, I still use oïl paint for some detailling

Gun and exhaust stains or overheated panels and so on

CC

 

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Thanks for the rigging diagram, that will come in helpful. 
Only small progress since last post, done a bit of thinking on how to add the exhaust stack after the engine cowling has been fitted and painted with the rest of the plane, and sprayed the Quickboost resin exhaust Vallejo exhaust metal.

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Next up will be weathering it a bit with some rust and tan colour, or something like that. Oh, and removing the little resin hole, and the tiny hair that somehow got stuck to it.

Painting the exhaust stack is one of my favourite parts of model building. :smile:
 

I also did a speed run to my closest hobby shop where I got my foot in the door just a minute before they closed on Saturday, and bought a bottle of Vallejo RLM 63.

It was only after I came home I took a good look at Vallejos interpretation of the RLM 63 Hellgrau colour:

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Hmmm... Really? 

I asked my German speaking girlfriend what "Hellgrau" meant, and she said "light grey", just like it says on the box. I am colourblind, but surely this is not light grey??
It certainly is a lot different than the other variants of RRL 63 I`ve seen, but maybe they are right and the others are wrong. :nah:

 

I`m assuming they are wrong, and I`m going to mix my own, lighter, shade. Partly because there is no way the plane is that dark when you look at the picture of it I posted, and partly because I think a lighter grey would make the plane look a lot better together with the darker RLM 24 blue nose. :daydream:

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RLM 63 is a funny colour as there were two (at least) distinct shades. One greener one grayer.  For my lkast He51 I used a mix of 2 humbrol grays  

 

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Not sure if it's entirely accurate but it looked right to me.

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  • 1 month later...

It has been a long while since the last update, I blame that on a long holiday and the purchase of a new motorcycle :thumbsup:

 

I finally chose my colour after looking at a lot of pictures of the He-51 on the internets, both periods and replicas. The colour in the period pictures and movies look very light grey to me. My guess for a colour "match" is Vallejo USAF Light Grey, which may be a bit too light, but I`ll try to tone it down a bit later on. It looks a bit greyer in real life than this.

 

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I`m not kidding when I say I have had close to 10 resprays of the fuselage, since there is so little contrast between the Roden plastic colour and the colour of my choice that I always spotted an area I had missed or not covered good enough. :angry:

But after having mixed and sprayed the main colour 10 times I had to do something else, so I put the decals on the top wing. I sprayed the wing with an acrylic floot polish I found, I`m sure it is not even close to the legendary Future, but it sprays like water and gives a nice semi gloss shine that goes well with models that should not be completely matte.

The Printscale decals went down well, and even the huge clear decal part between the letters is almost invisible. Which is good since I forgot to cut it away. :blush:

 

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I added the underwing compass from an Airscale decal and a brass instrument ring. It needs some touching up, but will look fine. The mirror is made with the use of a Liquid Chrome pen, but did not come out nearly as good as I`d hoped. :unamused:

Maybe some aluminum foil? Or maybe just leave it be.
 

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It is always nice to reach the stage where you can carefully put all the major parts together and kind of imagine how it will end up:

 

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But finally the RLM 63 part is done, and the next step is to spray the most likely blue colour, Bavarian blue. Not RLM 24 as suggested by the Printscale decal sheet instructions (That is two swings and two misses for them so far). I will need to mix that shade to match the blue on the decals, which unfortunately veers a bit towards purple. But If I can get the match good enough to survive a casual glance, I will be satisfied.

This hobby should be enjoyable after all. :smile:

 

And speaking about enjoyable, I need to fiddle with getting the exhaust stack in there. That will be a challenge. :hmmm:

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On 03/04/2019 at 14:10, Marklo said:

RLM 63 is a funny colour as there were two (at least) distinct shades. One greener one grayer.  For my lkast He51 I used a mix of 2 humbrol grays  

 

39817229341_12b0408da3_z.jpg

 

Not sure if it's entirely accurate but it looked right to me.

No, if there is something I have learned over the years it is that colour hues are almost impossible to pin down with any certainty. Nice kit btw, I almost regret not buying the seaplane version, as seaplanes are very cool and rarely made into kits.

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Lovely work.

 

Having worked on colour reproduction and matching and read up a bit on authentic colour, I find I tend to try to match the colour roughly to a reference and then go for 'pleasing colour'   I'll also try to vary the shade a little form build to build, If I have 2 PC10 schemes side by side I want them to look slightly different., because  in real life the colour will vary by batch, by  manufacturer, by how it was applied and by age and weathering, so in reality there is no perfect correct colour, there would be a range of colours . Even when you're comparing a restoration or a preserved machine the colours will have changed since they were applied.

 

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Mixed and sprayed a blue shade that compliments the unit decals and the Bavarian blue colours pretty well, although Bavarian blue is usually depicted a bit lighter. 
Touched up some of the inevitable masking accidents and then sprayed it with floor polish to make it ready for decals and washes.

 

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Most of the decals are on now, and I`d say they have grown on me. They are thin, reacts to decal solution well, and blends nicely into the background. So with the exception of the slight purpleness of the unit badge, they are overall very nice.

I feared the red and white decal that goes on the tail would not work out, but i used some setting solution and a soft brush to brush out the wrinkles and they set very nicely. After 24 hours I cut the rear rudder hinge line with a sharp knife and used a brush with some setting solution to bend the decal around the rudder line. And that worked very nicely. The white circle is slightly translucent, but it`ll work.

 

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I wouldn`t have been myself if I hadn`t done some totally stupid and unnecessary mistakes, so I need to touch up parts of the tail with red since I didn`t align the decal with the tail properly, and I also did not notice the werkenummer being a part of the red tail decal, so I cut that away... :facepalm: 

 

Maybe I`ll find something to use in the spare decal box. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Some slow progress, I have added the swastika and done some washes and weathering using AK Paneliner for grey and blue areas.

Very happy that the same colour matches both of the planes colours :thumbsup:.

 

The weathering is more visible in real life, but I wanted to keep it down to a low level since this was a peacetime aircraft that would have been washed and maintained.
Even so, I think sometimes my weathering might be too subtle so you`d need to watch the model closely to pick it up, as a casual glance wouldn`t. 

 

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I have praised the Print Scale decals for the way they blend into things with a little solution, but I must say overall I am not happy with them. The decals for the fuselage side are much too small, the real ones looks about 25% bigger and the number 5 should be under the pilots door while the 3 should still be almost at the tail plane. The balkenkreuz is much bigger in pictures too.

Not only that, but the aircraft ID should be repeated under the lower wing, and the decal sheet has nothing, not even the balkenkreuz there. 

But thankfully an Eduard 109 had some correct ones to spare.

 

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Please ignore the visible seams and putty, I don`t spend much time on things that will never be seen anyway.

Lastly I added the Quickboost resin exhausts. They fit well as long as you thin the inner parts of the shield by quite a bit, and the added detail with the hollow ends makes them worth the £4 they cost. 

I went over the burned metallic painted exhausts with some AK pigment, as the real exhaust looks kind of overall tan/metallic in pictures. The pigment removes the metal look they had, and looks more tan than rust in real life. But closeups like this reveals all the sloppy work... :whistle:

 

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I need to get more of these pigment powders, they are really useful for a lot of things!

 

 

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Looking really nice.

 

After seeing this I think I'd like to add a 1/48 He51 to my collection. I found the struts were a nightmare on my 1/72 sea[lane (Basically either the cabane struts were too long or the interplane struts were too short or vice versa and I ended up having to replace the interplane struts and owing to the compound angle it proved very very difficult...) 

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On 04/06/2019 at 23:29, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

This is looking really good, love the colors. The He-51 is one i definitely would love to build. 

 

On 05/06/2019 at 14:22, Marklo said:

Looking really nice.

 

After seeing this I think I'd like to add a 1/48 He51 to my collection. I found the struts were a nightmare on my 1/72 sea[lane (Basically either the cabane struts were too long or the interplane struts were too short or vice versa and I ended up having to replace the interplane struts and owing to the compound angle it proved very very difficult...) 

I can absolutely recommend the kit, the fit is overall good even if it needs some putty here and there. Add an instrument panel from Eduard or Yahu, and you will have taken care of its greatest weakness.

If you are going all in then you`d need to rebuild some of the cockpit tube structure so the upper tube doesn`t show above the door opening, and some other details that are left out. 

There is no Revi 2b gunsight, but thankfully the windscreen has an opening for it so you can build or use something that fits through it. Pretty weird they made a prominent opening without adding it though, didn`t anyone notice it was missing? :hmmm:

 

Edited by Eivind Lunde
Revi 2b, not 3b
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