A Triple German Jet Job part 3 - Horten Ho 229.

[Whofan]

Ho 229 - PM.

 

Some Britmodellers might easily have taken the opportunity to write a preamble about how squadrons of strange, bat shaped German planes decimated bomber formations during tthat period of the war after the death of Hitler and Rooseveldt, in January 1946, when it took the American bomber crews to demand that  - oh, well, some can, but I can't.

 

The kit itself, once the flash had gone, compared to the Zoukei Mura 1/72 was quite primitive, but again, no real dramas aside from some filling - sanding - priming and repeat action.

 

I mentioned flash in the original post about these kits - honestly, there was so much I spent ages cutting and sanding it off. I also spent a while sanding and scraping back ill formed in the moulds parts - the seat for instance had a difference of about  2 mm from one side of the mound to the other.

 

There is (in common with the Ta 183 and He 178 kits) almost no detail in the cockpits or wheel wells, but to my surprise, once deflashed and de stepped, the parts went together well, I used some Tamiya tape to make up some seatbelts in all three kits, and I really can't complain. Maybe they were a bit humdrum, but I had the opportunity to splash out if you like on scratching some detail, but chose not to.

 

The Ho 229 is done in a scheme I saw in scalemates, again a what if scheme, a splinter type camouflage over light blue. I'm not sure that I've done the splinter pattern as per the RLM, but hey, it only ever flew as a prototype, so I assumed some leeway here!

 

I used Halfords white primer on all these German jets, I appreciate the Britmodeller received wisdom is black primer for NMF, but I had the white primer out and the 3 German jets in the paint booth ( actually an Amazon delivery box opened up a little)  so they all got a coat of white.

 

Tamiya and Mr Color acrylic paints are my paints of choice, though Humbrol and colourcoats have featured in my builds, Windsor and Newton matt and gloss varnishes.

 

I'm not displeased with these kits. The PM kits were a pain with flash, and some mould seams that were out of kilter with each other, the Huckebein had some internal fit issues, and the Heinkel 178 suffered a bit from my own carelessness. OK, I suffered a bit from my own carelessness!

 

But overall they did not hugely fight being built, and to a certain extent were just tedious - fill sand prime  - fill sand prime - several times rather than awkward.

 

Clearly, the PM Ho 229 kit isn't a patch on the Zoukei Mura kit, which as mentioned I already have in the stash, and it will be interesting to see the differences when I get around to building the ZM kit.

 

I think for a couple of weeks work on all three, I've ended up with 3 modestly decent kits, representing the first true jet aircraft, and two what ifs to go with my Me 262 and He 162.

 

 

Edited September 1 by Whofan

[Dave Klaatu]

Nice!

This was the very first kit I built, painted with an airbrush! Although there was a tiny bit of spatter, because my first airbrush was an external mix, I thought it was still impressive (to me) and I fell in love with what could be done. I'm far past that now (many, many years ago) but still hold fond memories of that kit.

[The Spadgent]

Great work. I love the Horton. You’ve done a smashing job. I love the white band on the tail. 😇