He-112, RS Models, 1/72

[opus999]

I'm going to tackle the RS Models He-112 this time around. 

 

 

I really love the look of the He-112 -- It seems very elegant.  I have  book about the He-112 and it had quite a career in the Spanish Civil war and was flown by Hungary and briefly by Germany.  I've read that the He-112 was on par with the Bf-109 -- it seems that they were somewhat complimentary in that the Bf-109 was better in some respects and the He-112 was better at others. At any rate, it lost the contest and the Bf-109 went on to be a legend.  Makes me wonder what would've happened if the He-112 came out the winner.

 

Anyway, the kit looks nice at first blush.  I don't know if its considered a short run kit or not, but it appears far better than any short run I've worked on.  The surface of the plastic is smooth and the detail is nice (not terrific, but I admit I'm coming off a build of an Eduard Bf-109, so everything pales in comparison).  Plus there's no major flash, which is also nice. 

 

That's at first blush.  When I really started looking closely, some little annoyances pop out.  There's no major flash, but all the parts have a small (maybe a half mm or less) lip of flash.  When it comes to the fuselage, that's not a problem because it can be sanded off quickly and easily, but around the edges of parts like the wings and the horizontal stabilizers, it becomes a bit more of a problem because it needs to be trimmed off without damaging the  edge, or changing the shape.  Not a huge deal, but like I said, an annoyance.

 

 

Not many parts.  I spent most of my time at the bench yesterday cleaning up parts.  I also had to study cockpit photos because the instructions were mostly useless.  The instructions show 3 diagrams, and are small enough that it is hard to tell what arrows are actually pointing to.  So I decided to ignore them and just use the cockpit photos to guide my assembly of the cockpit.

 

This will be challenge to make nice-looking.

 

 

I assembled cockpit parts and prepared for painting.  I used latex liquid masking to cover mating surfaces.  Also you'll notice an addition to the fuselage: yes, that's a speed brake to an Airfix F-86.  There was supposed to be a part that goes there that the tail wheel would attach to.  That part was completely nonexistent.  It wasn't even on the parts diagram.  I was rummaging through my spares box to see what I could fit in there to anchor the tail wheel and that speed brake was the right shape to mostly fit the contour of the fuselage interior and make a good bond.

 

 

The fuselage halves have an opening for one of two panels:  one panel has an opening for a single stack, and the other has an opening for a row of 6 stacks.  I had to do a lot of cutting, sanding and shaping to get it to (sort of) fit.  The panels were too large in all dimensions. 

 

 

 

It will take a little work to make those look nice, but its not horrible. You can see that the panel sticks out too far in the front.

 

Before I went to bed last night I sprayed the interiors and the landing gears and bays RLM02.  Didn't get any pictures.

 

[marvinneko]

Reminds me of AZ models kits. There is always some curve that doesn't seat and that causes everything else to not fit. First time I adjusted everything else. Second time I managed to find the curves causing problems and then everything slid into place.

[stevehnz]

We don't see this kit feature very often. There is probably a reason for that.   I'll be keeping an eye on progress, guess who has one squirrelled away.  

Steve.

[Fin]

I wish you good luck with this! The fit, as you’re discovering, is generally poor and there are several cast issues (mine had a warp where the lower wings meet the fuselage) and design simplifications that will be or not a problem depending on how much you care about making this to ressemble the real thing. The gunsight is oversized and the wheels are undersized btw, but you can substitute those with some Bf-109 E wheels. The pitot is also missing iirc. The real issue though is the canopy. Accuracy aside, I do not think it’s possible to successfully fit it to this fuselage. I’ve seen people “solve” the bad fit in several ways and none was great. Apart from those that scratched their own or used the Falcon vacuform canopy.

 

Btw, the most significant service history the He 112 had was actually with the Romanian airforce.

 

[TheKinksFan]

12 hours ago, opus999 said:

There was supposed to be a part that goes there that the tail wheel would attach to.  That part was completely nonexistent.  It wasn't even on the parts diagram. 

The kit that RS originally tooled had some pretty serious shape issues, IIRC the fuselage is too narrow. So RS re-tooled the kit, but forgot the include that part that is unfortunately now missing. I have one of the original kits and another re-tooled, if I some day build the kit I will use combination of the parts, the original has less of that lip of flash that you describe. It's a big IF, the more I build 1/72 kits from Eduard, Arma Hobby, Clear Prop, or modern Special Hobby kits, the prospect of building a +10 year old short run kit becomes less and less tempting.

[opus999]

On 5/4/2025 at 1:54 PM, stevehnz said:

We don't see this kit feature very often. There is probably a reason for that.   I'll be keeping an eye on progress, guess who has one squirrelled away.  

Steve.

Welcome aboard Steve.  We'll see how it goes!  Coming off of an Eduard Bf-109 build, everything seems terrible, but I'll try to be objective. Of course, I did manage to slog through the Cooperativa La-15 a couple months ago and this is heavenly compared to that! 🤣

 

On 5/4/2025 at 3:33 PM, Fin said:

The gunsight is oversized and the wheels are undersized btw, but you can substitute those with some Bf-109 E wheels. The pitot is also missing iirc

This is all good to know!I thought the gunsight looked awfully big.I have a dozen gunsights left over from my Eduard builds.  They may not be totally accurate, but at least will be reasonably sized.  I've got some 109 E wheels, so that won't be a problem. And I'm pretty sure you're right that the pitot is not there, but that's easily fixed too.

 

On 5/4/2025 at 3:33 PM, Fin said:

The real issue though is the canopy.

Yeah.... that looked really janky.  Not sure if I can make it look decent or not.  

 

On 5/4/2025 at 3:33 PM, Fin said:

Btw, the most significant service history the He 112 had was actually with the Romanian airforce.

Yes!  I see now that I completely missed mentioning Romania in my opening post which is an oversight on my part.

 

15 hours ago, TheKinksFan said:

the more I build 1/72 kits from Eduard, Arma Hobby, Clear Prop, or modern Special Hobby kits, the prospect of building a +10 year old short run kit becomes less and less tempting.

I feel more and more this way.  In this case I really wanted to model this aircraft and (at the time I got it) this was the only kit I could find.  Maybe the old Heller kit would be less stressful?

[opus999]

Last night I took the liquid mask off the parts I'd painted.

 

 

I also did some detail painting.  This control stick is ridiculously oversized, and too tall. I left it because I don't think it will be easily visible in the end anyway...

 

 

Got the cockpit glued together and details painted.

 

 

I forgot to take a picture, but I wasn't entirely sure about how good the connection of the cockpit assembly to the fuselage was, so I took a piece of L-shaped styrene and used it to secure the cockpit to the fueslage.

 

Then, it was time to button the fuselage up.  There wasn't any real drama involved, but since there are no alignment pegs, slow and steady won the race.  Here's how I left it when I went to bed:

 

[Fin]

If I remember correctly the fit between the wings and fuselage is somewhat poor. In my case it required some work.

 

To answer your question, I prefer the Heller. I’ve built both (up to a point) and the Heller was a much happier experience to assemble. Attaching the leg covers is not clear/straightforward enough, but the rest is close to perfection. I actually had fun. On the downside, you need to make walls for the wheels bay area and it has raised panel lines. For the sake of consistency I chose to rescribe them and did not do a good job. There are more details here:

I wish there was a more modern kit for the He 112. It’s a beautiful plane I think and it offers several camo styles and national markings. Until then I bought another second-hand Heller.

That being said, you’re doing good progress with the RS and I don’ t see you complaining that much so Kudos! 😀 Are you making one of the Spanish AF machines with the Spanish roundels?

 

[opus999]

I took the clips off the fuselage and the seam actually looked pretty good -- particularly that there were no steps to deal with.  Here's a picture of how I added some "insurance" for the cockpit assembly (that I described yesterday):

 

 

Here are some examples of the lip of flash that is on each part.  It makes a raised area around each seam, but it is easily fixed:

 

 

 

I filled the gaps left in the seams with CA and sanded them all smooth.  I was generally pretty happy with the result, but a couple of phantom seams have appeared, so I will need to go over those spots again.

 

Here's how I left it last night:

 

 

11 hours ago, Fin said:

f I remember correctly the fit between the wings and fuselage is somewhat poor.

Oh yeah... it's poor...

 

 

 

Its actually better after I did some trimming to improve the fit.  The gaps will be easy to deal with.  What kills me is this step:

 

 

and even worse, this one!

 

 

Those will definitely be a pain to improve.  

 

The back part of the wing assembly has a strange asymmetry, so one side is sunken and will need to be re-shaped:

 

 

 

So, yeah, it looks like I've got 2 or 3 sessions at the bench devoted to sanding and filling.  Then all the obliterated panel lines will need to be rescribed.  Not exactly looking forward to this tedious work, but it still going much better than some other builds I've done. (I'm looking at you, Cooperativa!)

 

11 hours ago, Fin said:

There are more details here:

I think that turned out rather nice!  It's really got me thinking about finding a Heller version.  I generally don't scribe panel lines, but use a 0.2 mm pencil to draw in the panel lines.  It's much easier, and looks more realistic (to my eye, anyway).  

 

11 hours ago, Fin said:

Are you making one of the Spanish AF machines with the Spanish roundels?

Yes!  I decided to do the one on the box top.

[Fin]

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Those will definitely be a pain to improve.

Yes, those took me several days to basically resculpt the wing root which also meant way too much plastic dust.

 

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The back part of the wing assembly has a strange asymmetry, so one side is sunken and will need to be re-shaped:

That`s what I meant with the "warp". That plastic part seems to have been deformed during the casting process. I was wondering if mine was a one off or others have it too. Probably the molds deteriorated in time. It is a pain to fix, but be very careful at this point so that all these mismatches on all sides of the joint between the wings and fuselage do not distract you from the angle at which the wings should meet the fuselage. There`s no real location pin or substitute to assure a good match. It`s what killed the build for me.

 

Also, speaking of asymmetry, that large dent in the engine cowling where each side of the plastic had a different designer apparently is meant to be the supercharger air intake. It is very hard to see a photo of a real plane that shows this clearly and most people avoid posting photos of their model showing it too, but there shouldn`t be a vertical wall there; rather a hole.

Spoiler

 

Like Giampiero did for his build here:

Spoiler

I don`t know if it`s a detail you care about or can do something about at this stage, but I thought to mention it.

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I think that turned out rather nice! 

Thank you kindly!

 

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Yes!  I decided to do the one on the box top.

Looking forward to it! It`s a very colourful choise!

Edited May 7 by Fin

[opus999]

On 5/7/2025 at 6:15 AM, Fin said:

Also, speaking of asymmetry, that large dent in the engine cowling where each side of the plastic had a different designer apparently is meant to be the supercharger air intake. It is very hard to see a photo of a real plane that shows this clearly and most people avoid posting photos of their model showing it too, but there shouldn`t be a vertical wall there; rather a hole.

Yes, I'd thought about dealing with that before I glued the fuselage halves together, but (of course) forgot, so now it is harder to deal with.  But I managed it:

 

 

The hardest part was getting that divot in front of the intake to look ok.  don't know if it does or not -- it will take a coat of primer to determine that.

 

I'd also planned to drill out the gun holes.  @Fin, thanks for pointing me at @Giampiero Piva's build -- it made me think of a couple changes I hadn't considered.

 

This week was busy, so not much time at the bench.  Yesterday I'd planned to do more than I accomplished.  My allergies were really bad, so I woke late, took a nap and went to bed early.    Still I was able to accomplish a little bit.

 

First, I dealt with that terrible step on the starboard side wing root.  I used a cylindrical file, and then sand paper from 120 grit down to about 1500.  Once i was happy with the shape, I filled it with Tamiya putty, removed the excess with Mr. levelling thinner, and sanded from 1500 grit down to 6000 grit.  I think it looks OK.  It will probably not be perfect, since wing roots are practically impossible to get perfect.  After a camo job with flat paint, however, I'll bet it will be very difficult to see the imperfections.

 

 

 

Then I tackled the engine panel on the starboard side.  The biggest problem I noted with the panel, was that in places where the panel was flush with the rest of the fuselage, it still didn't look right because both sides of the seam sunk down to make a trough with the seam running down the middle.  So I decided to fill those troughs in to make everything flush, and rescribe the panel line.  That turned out rather well.

 

 

 

You'll note I didn't fill the aft panel line.  This is because of the sanding involved -- I didn't want to change the shape of the machine gun cover. For that, I will have to settle with Tamiya putty and Mr. levelling thinner.  I still need to rescribe the panel lines.

 

WIth any luck, I hope to get the port side wing root and engine panel squared away today.  A bonus would be getting that "warped area" on the bottom fixed.  We'll see.  Still need to figure out that canopy.  I really don't know if there's anything I can do to make it look nice.  I haven't been able to find any after market canopies either.

[opus999]

Oh, yeah... I forgot to note (and take pictures of) the work I did on the wings and tail.  I filled in gaps with CA, sanded off flash and then sanded them smooth to about 4000 grit.  I'm pleased with those too.  I guess you can see the leading edges in the pictures above.

[Fin]

Falcon Model has a set of canopies for a bunch of Luftwaffe aircraft, including one for the Heller He 112:

https://www.hannants.co.uk/product/FNCV0572?result-token=sg1fP

I’ve seen someone here use it successfully on the RS kit since it is designed to be posed open. The problem is the price if you do no intend to use the rest (which are designed for fairly old kits). I have not found any other AM canopy for the He 112.

 

Good job on the wing root fix by the way!

Edited May 10 by Fin

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

When I built the old Heller kit I had to add the barrels in the wheel wells for the wing guns. Does your kit have these or will you be adding them ?