Airfix Messerschmidt Me109 E-4 - Part II

It's been a tad quiet here for almost a month, but luckily I did manage to find a bit of time to work on my Me-109. In fact the work on it has progressed significantly and I have now reached the weathering stage.

So far, I am very pleased with this kit. I've experienced no problems while putting it together - all parts fit snugly and once everything was in place, only minimal filling was required to hide the joint between the fuselage halfs. The only mishap of this project happened during that stage and it was self-inflicted - I made quite a mess while rescribing fuselage panel lines.

Painting splintered camouflage scheme was equally straight-forward. As first step, while paint was airbrushed on wing edges and rudder control area. Once dry, those areas were masked off and pretty much whole aircraft was sprayed with RLM65 Helblau. Finally, the camouflage consisting of hard-edged two-color splinter pattern (RLM2 Grau and RLM71 Dunkelgrün) was much easier to reproduce than the diabolic curves of the Spitfire. All in all, a very simple painting scheme that shouldn't cause problems even for complete novices. At the same time I have to say that even this simple paint job learned me an important lesson - mask everything when working with airbrush. If you don't, there will always be some overspray accidents and even the mist that "bounces" from areas that are supposed to be painted will find its way onto unexpected places.

Oh yes... all paints used in this project were from Lifecolor. Great paints for airbrushing (less so for brush painting though) and the early war German set is worth every penny.

After painting and two coats of acrylic gloss varnish, it was time for the decals. Once again, I was completely blown away by the set provided with this kit. Not only is the quality very high (thin film, but able to withstand some mishandling), but also admirable attention to detail. One negative observation though - for some unexplicable reason only the guidelines for the largest decals is provided with the kit. Detailed instructions for all the stencils can be found on the net and wasn't very easy to track. For those interested, the document is located at http://www.airfix.com/_assets/files/A01008%20stencil%20layout.pdf at the time this post is written.

White and blue surfaces was masked of and first layer of
splinter camouflage was sprayed on the model

I had some problems rescribing the panel recesses
on the top of the fuselage

Once done with the painting, I applied two layers of gloss varnish onto entire model.
Next day I put on the decals. I was slightly perplexed by the pitot tube that was in the way of the cross on right wing, but this problem was solved by cutting the decal up just enough to be able to fit it around the obstructing bit. Generous dosage of MicroSet fixed the rest - the cut is completely invisible

Topside... looking all business!

Airfix Messerschmidt Me109 E-4 - Part I

An early Messerschmidt 109 was a rather logical choice for my next airplane project once I was done with the Spitifire. Not only am I rather keen on having those two old "enemies" sitting side by side on my display, but I was also very interested if Airfix would be able to keep impressed "two models in a row".

First impressions of the model were very positive - two sprues of grey plastic with no apparent blemishes or defects with clean mouldings and very nice panel engravings. Cockpit consists of three parts, making it possible to install it in open position. One detail did however raise my concern - some of very small details are attached to the sprue with rather "solid" lumps of plastic. Extra care must be taken when removing those fragile parts, because they easily be damaged or even broken due to the force needed to cut them out of the sprue. This is especially true when cutting out rear aerlion support balks.

Cockpit of the Messerschmidt is even sparser that that of the Spitfire and suffers from a major problem - the two part decal for instrument panel simply doesn't fit! It's at least a millimeter too large and would have been almost unusable if it wasn't for the fact that cockpit is so cramped that it's hardly possible to see any detail at all once the fuselague is closed and cockpit is in place. Nevertheless, if you don't have third party components at hand, you'd better be prepared to close that cockpit to avoid embarrassing questions. :-)