Listen for the engine, Listen for the bell, As the last fire-truck from hell, Goes rollin' by - GasPatch Models 1/48 Me163B Komet

[amos brierley]

Hi Alistair.           Can I impart some of my knowledge of this plane , reference to the cockpit sidewalks, I believe that the sidewalls are satin black. I made a Dragon Me163S some years ago and ran with this colour. I believe that the sidewalls are in fact the fuel tanks and that their colour is a reflection of being rubber black. 
 

Hope this helps,    😉.

[AliGauld]

1 hour ago, amos brierley said:

Hi Alistair.           Can I impart some of my knowledge of this plane , reference to the cockpit sidewalks, I believe that the sidewalls are satin black. I made a Dragon Me163S some years ago and ran with this colour. I believe that the sidewalls are in fact the fuel tanks and that their colour is a reflection of being rubber black. 
 

Hope this helps,    😉.

Thanks very much for the information.

I'll try and get it changed.

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[AliGauld]

Did I mention there are some seriously fiddly bits in the kits. Chuffing Heck I thought 1/72 was bad.

Some more RLM 66 flung around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some detail painting to do on these and then I'll get then stuck into the fuselage walls.

A little work done on the tub. Still need a bit of a wash to smooth things out.

 

 

Thanks for looking,

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[Dandie Dinmont]

5 hours ago, amos brierley said:

I believe that the sidewalls are in fact the fuel tanks

Just imagine the courage of the pilots who flew this thing into combat, surrounded by tanks of hideous flesh dissolving chemicals. It really does bigger belief. 
 

Strong progress as ever Alistair. 

Craig. 

 

[AliGauld]

24 minutes ago, Dandie Dinmont said:

Just imagine the courage of the pilots who flew this thing into combat, surrounded by tanks of hideous flesh dissolving chemicals. It really does bigger belief. 
 

Strong progress as ever Alistair. 

Craig. 

 

Thanks Craig.

 

It must have been bad enough that the fuel could blow you to Kingdom Come if you looked at it the wrong way but a simple leak could melt your flesh off.

It makes you think.

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[Marklo]

15 hours ago, AliGauld said:

It must have been bad enough that the fuel could blow you to Kingdom Come if you looked at it the wrong way but a simple leak could melt your flesh off.

There are several accounts of ground crew pouring fuel into an ‘empty’ container and blowing themselves up.

 

There were also many taxiing and landing accidents caused by the field combining unexpectedly.

The fuels as and of themselves weren’t that bad. It was more that they react together explosively.

Z stoff was potassium permanganate or sodium permanganate both reasonably benign, mixed with water

 

T stoff was concentrated hydrogen peroxide. Which can be caustic.

 

I don’t know if the statistic is true but it’s said that the 163 killed more Germans than Allies.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Marklo

[AliGauld]

45 minutes ago, Marklo said:

There are several accounts of ground crew pouring fuel into an ‘empty’ container and blowing themselves up.

 

There were also many taxiing and landing accidents caused by the field combining unexpectedly.

The fuels as and of themselves weren’t that bad. It was more that they react together explosively.

Z stoff was potassium permanganate or sodium permanganate both reasonably benign, mixed with water

 

T stoff was concentrated hydrogen peroxide. Which can be caustic.

 

I don’t know if the statistic is true but it’s said that the 163 killed more Germans than Allies.

I thought it used C Stoff i.e Hydrazine as one part of the component fuels but I may be wildly out there.

It was the chemical reaction between the two fuels that gave it it's power.

They use Hydrogen Peroxide as a fumigation process at my work every week. It's diluted but your eyes can get a bit scratchy if you come back in too soon.

 

Thanks for the info.

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[TempestV]

On 8/14/2021 at 11:09 AM, AliGauld said:

 

This is looking lovely!

 

I recently acquired one of these too and I am hoping that we see a couple of aftermarket decal sheets soon - I like my Komets with mottle and am not terribly keen on the schemes in the box.

 

cheers,

Chris

 

 

[AliGauld]

1 hour ago, TempestV said:

This is looking lovely!

 

I recently acquired one of these too and I am hoping that we see a couple of aftermarket decal sheets soon - I like my Komets with mottle and am not terribly keen on the schemes in the box.

 

cheers,

Chris

 

 

Thanks,

If we all liked the same stuff things would be a lot less interesting. 😉

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[Dandie Dinmont]

According to Wikipedia (so take this for what you think it's worth) the fuels were T-Stoff and C-Stoff. This is somewhat confirmed by the small 'T' and 'C' you can see just behind the cockpit and near the tail of the colour schemes in Alistair's first post. Apparently the tanks on either side of the cockpit held T-Stoff and a quick google brings up links (none of which I dared click on) to some luckless pilot who was dissolved after a fuel leak. Oh, and if you had the undercarriage lever in the wrong position on touchdown, you were highly likely to break your back. I can well believe that it killed more Germans than Allies.

 

Craig.

[AliGauld]

1 minute ago, Dandie Dinmont said:

According to Wikipedia (so take this for what you think it's worth) the fuels were T-Stoff and C-Stoff. This is somewhat confirmed by the small 'T' and 'C' you can see just behind the cockpit and near the tail of the colour schemes in Alistair's first post. Apparently the tanks on either side of the cockpit held T-Stoff and a quick google brings up links (none of which I dared click on) to some luckless pilot who was dissolved after a fuel leak. Oh, and if you had the undercarriage lever in the wrong position on touchdown, you were highly likely to break your back. I can well believe that it killed more Germans than Allies.

 

Craig.

I don't think that the entire thing was thought through all the way. 

Then again at that point in the war they were clutching at any straw that came along.

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[Dandie Dinmont]

2 minutes ago, AliGauld said:

I don't think that the entire thing was thought through all the way. 

Then again at that point in the war they were clutching at any straw that came along.

 

 

Indeed. Compared to things like the Natter and the Manned version of the V1, the Komet looks positively sensible.

 

Craig.

[Retired Bob]

4 minutes ago, Dandie Dinmont said:

Indeed. Compared to things like the Natter and the Manned version of the V1, the Komet looks positively sensible.

The thing with the 163 was that it was started quite early in the war, it just took so long to develop the rocket engine.  It didn't stop at the war's end, reading about a Russian pilot testing one, on a bad landing it injured his back and smashed his head against the canopy.  He returned to duty 3 weeks later ok apart from spinal injuries and cranial damage???

I have just got the Gaspatch kit, looks much better than the old Trimaster one, there is always the red one of Major Wolfgang Spate. 

[Dandie Dinmont]

Just now, Retired Bob said:

The thing with the 163 was that it was started quite early in the war, it just took so long to develop the rocket engine.  It didn't stop at the war's end, reading about a Russian pilot testing one, on a bad landing it injured his back and smashed his head against the canopy.  He returned to duty 3 weeks later ok apart from spinal injuries and cranial damage???

 

 

Not just the Russians. If I recall correctly, Winkle Brown was quite badly injured doing landing trials in the very aircraft Alistair is modelling.

 

Craig.

[Marklo]

3 hours ago, AliGauld said:

I thought it used C Stoff i.e Hydrazine

You could well be right. And yes hydrazine can be rather nasty. Not as bad as mariatic acid which we used to use as an etchant on titanium parts back in my aerospace days  

 

 

 

 

Edited August 16, 2021 by Marklo

[bigbadbadge]

Nice progress Alistair.

Chris

[AliGauld]

21 minutes ago, Marklo said:

You could well be right. And yes hydrazine can be rather nasty. Not as bad as mariatic acid which we used to use as an etchant on titanium parts back in my aerospace days  

 

 

 

 

The worst chemical I've had to deal with was when we used to run the Hydrocyanics on the ECML. Our special instruction for running this train of very nasty stuff was that if it was overtime by more than one minute in any section we had to stop all traffic until it was proved to be moving or the driver reported in.

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[AliGauld]

21 minutes ago, bigbadbadge said:

Nice progress Alistair.

Chris

Thanks Chris,

Very kind of you.

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[AliGauld]

I gave the tub a bit of a wash with Starship Filth.

 

 

 

And I've just noticed I didn't give the rudder pedals a wash, so I'll do that and once everything has settled I'll hit it with a satin varnish to take the shine off.

 

Various really really small bits were fitted to the fuselage halves.

 

 

 

Again bits missed I'll do the landing skid holder as well.

 

Decals stuck on the IP

 

 

Once the decals have bedded in I'll pop some Krystal Klear into the dial faces but might give it a light dry brush first.

The gloss coat really flattens all the detail out with the flash photo.

 

Finally I couldn't resist this.

 

 

Thanks for looking,

 

Cheers,

Alistair

 

 

[Dandie Dinmont]

This is looking incredibly smart Alistair. Might I suggest that you include a small coin or some other means of determining scale in the pictures so that we can be astounded by the smallness of the greeblies?

 

Craig. 

[AliGauld]

1 minute ago, Dandie Dinmont said:

This is looking incredibly smart Alistair. Might I suggest that you include a small coin or some other means of determining scale in the pictures so that we can be astounded by the smallness of the greeblies?

 

Craig. 

Roger that. I'll be back in a few minutes.

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[AliGauld]

Here you go Craig,

 

 

 

 

 

I hope that makes the fiddliness clearer.

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[Dandie Dinmont]

Of course the fatal flaw with my suggestion is that it’s been so long since I actually saw a coin that this didn’t actually help much. But having dug around down the back of our sofa and re-familiarised myself with our coinage, I am now suitably gobsmacked. I hope all this tiny detail isn’t making you so cross-eyed that you start pulling the wrong levers at work! This is going to be a model to remember. 
 

Craig. 

[AliGauld]

4 minutes ago, Dandie Dinmont said:

Of course the fatal flaw with my suggestion is that it’s been so long since I actually saw a coin that this didn’t actually help much. But having dug around down the back of our sofa and re-familiarised myself with our coinage, I am now suitably gobsmacked. I hope all this tiny detail isn’t making you so cross-eyed that you start pulling the wrong levers at work! This is going to be a model to remember. 
 

Craig. 

I will admit I had to crack open the Tardis piggy bank to find some coinage. 

The optivisor is getting a fair work out with this one.

 

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[bigbadbadge]

I was gonna say  I haven't seen cash for a year and a half now, I wouldn't be able to use a coin as we have a new sofa so nothing has dropped down the back yet!!!

 

Great work on the teeny tiny details Alistair,  looks good.

Chris