Popular Post SoftScience Posted January 3 Popular Post Posted January 3 Hil all, it's been a good while since I posted anything here, so I'd like to share one project from 2024 that I'm most proud of. Airfix's 2010s era He111 is was what you Brits might call a curate's egg. Some aspects are excellent. There are great interior details, things scale out just right, and the complex curves of the wings and canopy are captured perfectly. The engineering of the complex landing gear is done very cleverly, and I like that Airfix gives you the option to open the unique vertical bomb bay (curiously, there are no bombs provided). On the other hand, fit was a little tricky in places, and I used more filler than I have on other Airfix models from the period. I had a very hard time fitting the four piece glass nose, but I think much of that was due to user error. My advice is to glue the three main pieces together BEFORE you add them to the fuselage. The fit of the lower wings and flaps was also tight, and the fit of the side windows was extremely tight side windows didn't fit at all without major shaving. What really surprised me was the low quality of the decals. Airfix has established a track record of supplying excellent decals printed by Cartograph. Indeed, the box side says Cartograph. But these have a thick flat finish, and were a little stiffer than any Cartograph decals I used before. They reminded me more of old Italeri decals. They also had very poor adhesion, and some of the smaller stencils fell off after they had dried. I hope I just got a bad batch, because this was totally uncharacteristic. As for the build. It went quickly. I think I finished the model in about three weeks, which is very fast for me. Despite some of the fit issues, the kit is designed to be quickly assembled. I added some paper belts, and replaced the stick-like Airfix MGs, with the somewhat overscaled, but more MG-ie looking guns from the old Italeri heinkel. I also used a set of resin wheels I had laying around. The model was painted with Mr. Color RLM 65, 70, and 71. I also applied several shades of green, brown, and drab colored oil paint filters (basically dirty thinner), to shift the colors and add some tonal variety. The exhaust stains are Tamiya smoke. I lightened the greens just a touch in an effort to achieve the look of an airplane under sunny skies, and I didn't want the model to turn into a heinkel-shaped black hole on my display shelves, with the two very dark greens. These might look too bright for some color purists, but I think they make the model visually more interesting. Alse the colors have a lot less contrast when not under my bright photography lights. So there we have it. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give this one a 6. The fit issues were one thing, but the poor decals really brought this one down by one or two points. 92 1 8
TheyJammedKenny! Posted January 3 Posted January 3 Great job on this! I really love the "Anglo-Saxon" cartoon on the rudder. Your air cover "umbrella" can only do so much against the Luftwaffe! By September, the Germans were much less smug about it all.
georgeusa Posted January 3 Posted January 3 In spite of your difficulties you have completed a very good looking 111. The finish and build are excellent. Thanks for sharing.
modelling minion Posted January 3 Posted January 3 Excellent result on your Heinkel, she really does look very good indeed.
Michael louey Posted January 3 Posted January 3 Looks great - I really need to ditch my Italeri kits and get one of these. It looks a lot nicer than the Hasegawa with its overdone panel lines. Cheers Michael
obdl3945 Posted January 4 Posted January 4 (edited) Ah, a belated Christmas present, this one... 😲😁. Superb all round... so many things to like; excellent weathering on all surfaces, proper shades of green in my opinion, flawless execution of the correct splinter pattern layout, correct positioning of the swastika on the tail under the forward location point of that extremely annoying rudder balance and best of all, the proper presentation of the codes on the right side of the fuselage - sadly, something that I see less and less often nowadays, where the overall unit code, in this example 'G1', the code for KG55, should always sit to the left of the national marking, no matter what side you're looking at. Thank you for getting that correct. It is literally the cherry on the cake for me. Exceptionally well done... 😉👍. Edited January 4 by obdl3945 1 1
StevieD Posted January 4 Posted January 4 (edited) 13 hours ago, TheyJammedKenny! said: Great job on this! I really love the "Anglo-Saxon" cartoon on the rudder. Your air cover "umbrella" can only do so much against the Luftwaffe! By September, the Germans were much less smug about it all. The figure with the umbrella is most likely British PM, Neville Chamberlain. The umbrella he always carried became a symbol of peace and statesmanship around the time of the Munich crisis and became a very popular image. The Luftwaffe crew took it up here, to show Chamberlain’s umbrella might stop the rain but not their bombs. Edited January 4 by StevieD 2
TheyJammedKenny! Posted January 4 Posted January 4 8 hours ago, StevieD said: Neville Chamberlain Who had been moved to the front bench in May 1940 to make way for Churchill. Very interesting!
corsaircorp Posted January 5 Posted January 5 Really sharp He 111 Sir !! Impressive job for sure !! Sincerely. CC
SoftScience Posted January 5 Author Posted January 5 Thank you, everybody for the really positive responses. I didn't think this model would generate this much response. I'm really happy you liked it.
woody37 Posted January 5 Posted January 5 A lovely build. I've been thinking about building mine and this is a great inspiration to dig it out.
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