Airfix Messerschmitt Bf110C-2/C-4

My grand plan of making one model per month is falling apart, but Easter is just around the corner and that means couple of days away from work. In other words, it's time to move on to next icon of Battle of Britain - Messerschmitt 110.

After somewhat disappointing experience with Hurricane I, Airfix returns back to my favors with the new tooling of this classic twin-engined jack of all trades. At first glance, it looks to be an excellent model - considering the low price, detail of parts is excellent and panel lines are very crisp, although perhaps a bit too deep.

So far I have only finished the cockpit and put together the fuselage. Cockpit detail is, as expected, very rudimentary - floor, seats, partition wall between pilot and radio operator/rear gunner. Three rather oversized magazines for gunner's machine gun (one of which I managed to lose somewhere) provide a little detail for the floor. Instrument panel consists once again of a single decal. Very basic, but as can be seen in the pictures, not much of the interior will be seen once the fuselage is closed, so it's not much of a problem unless you choose to make it into one.

The fact that instrument panel plate doesn't fit into the fuselage is however a very real problem. Original form of that component makes it impossible to close the fuselage - there is at least 2mm gap. To rectify the problem, the instrument plate needs to be filed down a notch. In my case, it created another problem, because unaware of this needing to be done, I already put the instrument panel into place. Dry-fit and file this component before you stick the decal on to avoid this hassle.

Couple of words about the painting I've done so far. Pilot suits are my own interpretation, based on materials I have available. Airfix suggests that pilots wore bright blue-colored overalls, my own impression is that the crews also wore some sort of jacket on top of it. Pictures I found on the net and in my books suggest that black leather or dark tan-colored jackets similar to those worn by bomber boys were in favor among Me-110 crews, but don't take my word for it. My "historical research" is rudimentary at best and my usual approach when in doubt is 'if it's probable, it's good enough'.

Decals are of same fine quality as those in other new offerings

from Airfix. Complete set of stencil decals is included.

Three sprues of components out of the box.

Bomb armament and external fuel tanks won't be used by me

in this project, but they're a nice addition to my spare part box.

Putting together the fuselage turned out to be 

a bit of a hassle due to over-sized instrument panel plate.

If you're in a mood for a quick trip over the Channel, this cockpit

 provides a lot of room for a picnic box and a couple of bottles of wine.

Airfix Hawker Hurricane I - Part III

The Hurricane is done. My final verdict of this model is pretty much unchanged - it's an old model and something of a dog because of its age. On the positive side, it's cheap, simple to build and in my very uninformed opinion bears a decent resemblance of the subject matter. Also, the alternative decals for Irish Airforce (very nice to work with) gives a possibility to do something 'different' - those green-orange roundels and stripes do attract attention.

This time around I opted not to apply any weathering, for the simple reason that I don't think that such subtleties  contribute very much to a model with rised panel lines.

Airfix Hawker Hurricane I - Part II

Quick progress report on the Hurricane - dark green camouflage pattern (Humbrol 163 slightly lightened up with couple of drops of white) has now been applied. After frustrations with masking of the Spitfire, at first I tried to make life easier for me and gave the Blu-Tack a try. For those unfamiliar with Blu-Tack, it's a sticky mass used to... well, stick things together. The advantage of this material is that it isn't 'permanent' and can easily be removed from surfaces. At one time or other, some brilliant modeler  realized that this stuff could be rolled into a 'sausage', which in turn could be laid out on the model surface and used to demark camouflage lines. There is plenty of movies on Youtube demonstrating this technique, so take a look at it if it sounds like something you could use.

 In case of my Hurricane, I had however to go back to masking with transparent film. Don't know if it's the porosity of Humbrol acrylic paint or perhaps the formula of domestic variant of Blu-Tack is a bit different, but it turned out that when placed on the already painted upper surface of the model, the sticky mass 'sausages' left a light-greish discoloration that was almost impossible to remove or scrap away. I will definitely try this technique again in the future, but on this occasion it was a 'no-go'.

Once the masks were in place, some airbrushing did the rest of the job. Addition of dull green didn't make much to improve the appearance of the model, but it's at least now looking properly 'military'.

Airfix Hawker Hurricane I - Part I

Considering the beautiful new tooling of Airfix's Hurricane II I've recently acquired, I was deeply disappointed when I opened the box containing the earlier variant of this venerable airplane. Hiding in its flashy red box was a really "old dog" from sixties or maybe even earlier. I admit that this initial letdown almost made me put the kit aside, after all why waste time on something this ancient when there are so many more attractive offerings.

Here's the thing though - amazingly, there seems to be no other models of Hurricane I in 1/72 on the market at this moment! Airfix plans to release one later this year, but currently their old release is all that a fan of Battle of Britain can get in this scale. With this knowledge in my mind, I decided to proceed... but my heart wasn't in it.

As pictures below clearly illustrate, the model is extremly basic. With the exception of a generic pilot seat, the cockpit lacks any detail, not even a steering stick. Instrument panel consists of plain plastic surface, integrated with the fuselage halves. "Luckily" the canopy is thick and sturdy, thus obliterating any view into the cockpit once in place.

Airplane body is represented in equally rudimentary manner. Fuselage halves fit together well, but there is no crispness or detail to speak off. Joint between wings and fuselage leaves large gaps that need some work. Undercarriage is perhaps the most disapointing part of this kit - wheel wells are completely missing, thus exposing the 'dirty underwear' of model components.

If you get the impression that this modell isn't receiving a lot of "love" from me, you're absolutely correct. This lack of enthusiasm shows in the results - the fact is that I am mostly going through the motions here.

Hurricane I from Airfix shows its age and needs a replacement... badly!

Perhaps the most positive part of this kit are the decals of Irish Airforce. 

This rather unusual option is what convinced me to proceed with the build. 

In general, the model fits together rather nicely. 

One exception is the joint between wing roots and the fuselage.

Underside of this model is really nasty! I should have tried to cover up this mess, 

but I couldn't convince myself to spend more time on this kit than absolutely necessary.

Apparently the Irish stuck with standard RAF camouflage scheme of this period. 

Dark sea grey on the top... 

and Ocean Grey for lower surfaces.

Gap between wing root and fuselage still visible. 

More filling and filing followed.

Airfix Messerschmidt Me109 E-4 - Part III

It was bound to happen sooner or later - one small mistake leads to another and then yet another, then you loose the patience and the final result is a scratched project. Well, in this case I should say "almost scratched", since I managed to recover, but it was a close call.

OK, so what happened? As reported in previous post, I was done with building, painting and the decals. My little Messerschmidt was ready for final stage - weathering. First off, I decided to highlight the panel lines. In Spitfire project I did this in traditional way - mix of black and burnt umber oils heavily thinned with turpentine was brushed into the engravings, with capillary force doing the rest of the job. This time around I've decided to try something else.

Couple of weeks ago, by pure coincidence, I found on Youtube a demonstration of weathering fluids from company called Flory Models. The results looked impressive to say the least, so I've ordered a couple of bottles of this "magic" product. The package arrived promptly just a couple of days later and now it was time to try it out.

I'm starting to realize that Youtube has become an invaluable assistance for modellers.

The weathering fluid from Flory Models is extremely easy to use, but using it for the first time was a little bit scary. It takes a tiny leap of faith to just slap a dark brown, dirty fluid all over a shiny, clean and freshly painted model. Pictures below show how the model looks after the application of the fluid - I think we can all agree that it's not a pretty sight.

Here's the thing though - all that grime can easily be removed with slightly damp paper towel and it doesn't matter when you do it. In this case, I've applied the fluid in the morning and removed it during late evening of same day. And of course, if dirt is the effect you're after, you don't have to remove all of it. In this first trial, I removed most of the residue, mostly to see how it would affect the areas of the model that I wanted to stay clean. I was very pleased with finding out that only a very faint darkening remained once I cleaned the model. All panel recesses were however beautifully outlined in dark brown.

Encouraged by this result, I've decided to take the weathering process a little bit further - with help of weathering powders I'd try to recreate the smoke stains around the engine exhausts and gun barrels. Simple task really - just take a little powder, add some turpentine and apply the mix in right spots. Right....

Things started to go wrong when I spilled a little too much weathering powder into the container. Didn't give it much thought at the time. Next, I couldn't find the bottle with turpentine. By now a little frustrated, I grabbed the bottle with rubbing alcohol instead - after all, one solvent is as good as another! The mix was a little thick, but yet again, I didn't think much about it until it was too late. I slapped it onto the model and left it to dry.

To say that the result of my efforts wasn't as I expected is an understatement. I wanted for the powder to leave gentle streaks of smoke residue. Instead, a thick, hard-edged crust was now blemishing my beautiful model. Allright, no harm done, I thought, I'll just remove it with a brush moistened in rubbing alcohol. Bad idea! To my surprise, my attempts had no noticeable effects on the powder crust. To my horror, the alcohol did have a visible effect on acryilic gloss varnish I applied as a preparation for deployment for decals and a sealer once they were in place. The entire project was rapidly going south and I admit that at this stage I was ready to toss the model into the bin.

In the end I decided to wait and access the damage once the alcohol evaporated. The inspection wasn't very encouraging - in spots where I tried to remove the weathering powder 'melted' into the varnish, resulting in ugly stains. In pure desperation, I decided upon one last rescue attempt by airbrushing the  dark brown paint over the "damaged" areas. This worked remarkably well - thin layers of paint did manage to mask most of the ugly stains. If I had better control over my airbrush, I might even have done a pretty decent weathering job out of it. But I think it can safely be said that I was again a bit overeager and the final result is an airplane which looks as if it suffered a severe engine fire.

I've learned three important lessons from this project. First of all, rescribing the panel lines is much more difficult than I expected. Second, less is more when working with weathering powders! Third, acrylic varnishes and rubbing alcohol don't like each other.

Finished model. Areas where the "disaster" struck are plainly visible.

Sot areas around exhausts and gun barrels are overdone...

...but I have to say that by now I barely notice the mistakes.

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. :-)