PM 1/72 Ho 229 Nightfighter

 

Okay, this is a perfectly awful kit, but it was really cheap. PM is a kit manufacturer in Turkey. I'd built their 1/72 Ho 229 kit back in the '80s (when the company called itself Pioneer Models) and about a decade later they came out with this two-seat nightfighter version that never flew.

I did a little scratchbuilding and added a couple of figures from the spares box. I also elected to show it in flight, partly because the landing gear on this kit is nothing to look at. I made a base from Sculpey and 1/8" acrylic rod.

Finish is RLM 74/75 on top, black underneath. One thing that went wrong along the way was I lost one of the two fairings from the engine fronts, so I chucked a piece of styrene rod in my drill press and used it as a lathe to form a replacement. Then I lost the other kit part and the replacement I'd made, so I ended up making three of them. The carpet monster has the others. Gotta admire that carpet monster! He can eat just about anything I drop, up to at least an inch in size, and he doesn't even need carpet to hide in. He manages to maintain total invisibility on the bare concrete of my workshop floor.

Pitot tube is 1/32" brass tubing with a bit of brass rod superglued in the end.

...and Braille Scale Kettenkrad

And here's the 1/72 Kettenkrad that comes with the Schwimmwagen in the Hasegawa kit (31113, originally MB-103). Not much to say about this, other than I'm still using up stocks of Polly Scale paints (Panzer Yellow and Grimy Black, to mention two). The seated figures that come with it are pretty awful, but there's a standing figure who might be usable. I won't embarrass Hasegawa by showing you what the figures look like. Instead, here's another of their early vehicle models, from 1973! Sure, it's simplified (the front wheel and fork are one piece, as are each of the two track and wheel assemblies), but actually it's quite a little gem, with nice detail and just a bit of seam lines and flash.



It was a really quick build, but at least I took the time to clean up these minor defects where visible. The instruments are painted black with these nifty Gundam markers I got on sale cheap at the Dragon USA online store, which seems not to have much inventory anymore, but that's another story.

Anyhow, I like these little multi-kits. They're like little dioramas in a box, or playsets if you like to move them around the workbench while making "vrrroom" noises.

Braille scale Schwimmwagen

Raiding other model kits for figures - and in this case, just an arm - I broke into Hasegawa's 1/72 Schwimmwagen/Kettenkrad set. I was cobbling together a pilot figure for Eduard's 1/72 MiG-15 bis (more about that in a future post). Anyhow, opening a kit to steal parts from it leaves you open to the impulse to just build the damn thing, especially if it's a quick easy build. Maybe you're different, but without impulsivity I don't think I'd ever build models. We'll see if I get the impulse to build the Kettenkrad, too.
Marking options include army, SS, and Luftwaffe, so I went with Luftwaffe, since it might come in handy in some future diorama. I left out the driver figure, since it's sort of a misshapen blob with an oversized head. As you can see, the decal on the driver's side of the tub just sort of disintegrated. To help cover up this defect, I abandoned the plan to leave the whole thing in solid Panzer Yellow (one of the Polly S paints I still have) and brushpainted some camo with Model Master enamels (Panzer Red-brown and Panzer Green). The canvas top started out Humbrol Deck Teak, but it seemed too close to Panzer Yellow, so I overpainted it with Humbrol Hemp. The top lacks a rear window, which would have been clear vinyl on the real thing, so I glued on a piece of envelope window with Micro Crystal Clear. It's like Elmer's only better, and I used it to glue on the license plates from the decal sheet. (Yes, that's what instructions tell you to do, too.) Tires are Vallejo German Grey lightened in areas with Medium Sea Grey - my go-to method of painting tires.

Quick work. So there you have it. Not the best Schwimmwagen model out there (why do the blackout covers on the headlights have their slits at odd angles? And the propeller and prop guard are molded as one piece that's merely a suggestion of what should be there). The whole thing is barely two inches long, but it looks enough like a Schwimmwagen that I'm happy with it.

Accurizing Revell AG's 1/72 Horten 229, Part 2

I've included some excellent drawings by A L Bentley from Merrick's German Aircraft Interiors so you can see my main reference. I just checked ABE books and saw it at $38 in acceptable condition. It's worth every penny!

Here's a rundown of the modifications I've made so far to the kit.

The nose. The first inaccuracy I noticed upon opening the box was the shape of the nose. The kit part has a somewhat angular nose shaped very like that of the Hs 129. In profile, it should look like a fairly blunt-nosed thick cambered airfoil, e.g. NACA 2418. I made a drawing of the correct curve from references and printed it out in 1/72 scale, then cut a piece of sheet styrene to this shape. Next I cut the kit part in half and sandwiched the piece in between. The rest was puttying and sanding to produce a master. The images below show resin copies made from a two-piece RTV mold of the master, with a couple of kit parts installed.  The obvious additions are the fronts of the jet engines, but I also cut off part of the landing gear door (discussed in Part 1) and made it a fixed part of the nose. This correction I made after molding the replacement nose, having noticed that the opening for the nose gear bay should be somewhat farther back. There are a bunch of these resin parts out there somewhere (hopefully in completed builds) as I was selling copies for a buck plus shipping back in '98.

Accurizing Revell AG's 1/72 Horten 229, Part 1

A layout of the Revell AG 1/72 Go 229 on my workbench, showing bits that have been assembled, modified, or replaced.

I've been working on this project off and on since kit came out in the '90s. This kit seems to represent a production Ho 229 (or more properly, Go 229), putting it in the realm of Luft '46. The decal sheet from the original release has operational markings for JG 301 including the Reichsverteidigung stripes. This puts it beyond historical fact, where its accuracy isn't subject to as much criticism. However, I decided to represent the Go 229V3 as it might have looked fully assembled. The V3 was and is a very real airplane, now in the hands of the National Air and Space Museum.