Von Plonk's 109

[Uncle Pete]

Hello again, lads, here's another contribution from Uncle Pete's House of Questionable Plastic Things.  While perusing the Buckley Air Force a couple of months back it dawned on me Squadron Leader A.C. Plonk was getting all the action while his distant cousin in Germany, Major F. Von Plonk, had only 2 aircraft to his name (a Ju 87 and an F 104) so I thought I'd get him the German Spitfire, a good old Me 109.

 

 

The build was quite uneventful and everything was going nicely, fit as good as one would expect, paint going on smoothly, masks detaching without taking any paint along for the ride but then... The mottling.  It didn't look easy on the box art but on the other hand it didn't look terribly difficult.  Well, only one of those conditions was met.  I took it as far as the "stop trying to make it better because you're starting to make it worse" point and called it a plane.

 

The antenna had crumbled when I attempted to cut it from the sprue so a spare U/C door found itself trimmed down and re-purposed.  Size and shape are guesswork.

 

 

 

 

 

You may have noticed something fishy about the tail wheel.  I was in the process of installing it (and I'd done a lovely job of painting it, too) when it launched itself from the tweezers at Mach 2.3.  I never saw it again.  Given the strange physics of dropped small parts and the prevailing westerlies it could have landed anywhere between Chester and Birmingham.

 

And that created a backstory for Major Von Plonk's 109.  He'd been scrambled to intercept a squadron of American bombers and as he released the brakes his tailwheel inexplicably snapped off.  "Himmel!"  He snarled, "Now I vill not be able to lead mein men into battle!"  (I learned fluent German from Battler Britton and Biggles stories when I was a kid).  Von Plonk's faithful batman however stepped in, literally, to save the day.  Obergefreiter Hans Blitzfuß was not only the best batman in the Luftwaffe, he was also the fastest sprinter.  "Do not despair, Herr Major," he declared, "I can run 100 metres in 10.8 seconds.  I vill carry you down ze runway!"  And stuffing his body into the tail wheel well...

 

 

... Hans Blitzfuß saved the day.

 

 

The mission was quite successful and Von Plonk shot down a B 25.  Unfortunately, however, the pilot was this guy...

 

 

[RadMax8]

Great back story! Those pesky plastic parts physics really do wreak havoc, don’t they? Only thing worse is photo etch parts physics. There’s an area around earth’s orbit that is a large cloud of tiny PE parts forever lost. Carpet monster? Hardly...

 

I think the mottle on the plane looks just fine, especially for only your 3rd Luftwaffe build!

 

 Thanks for sharing!

[VolkerR.]

Please build more Luftwaffe aircraft! I would love to see von Plonks 190 or 262. But even more I would like to read the stories behind them.:)

Btw. the mottling looks ok to me.

Volker

[Wulfman]

I look forward to  more adventures of Herr Von Plonk.

 

Wulfman

[Uncle Pete]

4 hours ago, VolkerR. said:

I would love to see von Plonks 190

 

1 minute ago, Wulfman said:

more adventures of Herr Von Plonk.

You'll be glad to know I have a 190 ready to go.  Von Plonk is very excited about it... He says a 190 must be 81 better than a 109.  

[kapam]

That's an extremely resourceful (not to mention loyal and/or crazy) batman that Herr Plonk has at his service!

Any further accounts of the Major's exploits would be most welcome.

Excellent mottling, too - something that I tried to master by free-hand airbrushing and failed dismally.

Yours, on the other hand, has turned out beautifully.

😎