Heinkel He 162A-2
"WNr. 120015"
Here is my
Revell He 162A-2 I built about a year ago in the colors of
"Yellow 21" (WNr. 120015) of the 1./JG 1, Leck airfield, May
1945.
This kit is
one of greatest bang for the buck you can possibly get out there,
having very good details and great fit of the parts and all with a small
price tag. I built the kit without any aftermarket parts, I've added only
scratchbuilt details to the cockpit, landing gear/bays and the engine. If
I should build it again, I would buy metal landing gear because the
bird is a heck of a tail sitter and I had to put a serious amount of
ballast in the nose cone and behind the cockpit to keep it balanced.
Although I've reinforced the gears' attachment points, the model is still
somewhat wobbly on its legs. Apart from this minor shortcoming, the
remainder of the building was completely trouble-free.
While I was
researching the subject on the Net, I found this great site packed full of
amazing reference pictures: http://memorial.flight.free.fr/He162uk.html
It's a French
site which shows the restoration of many aircraft (in particular WW I
ones), but among others, there is "WNr. 120015", one of the five
He 162s acquired by the French Air Force at the end of WW II.
I was
immediately attracted by this subject because during the restoration
process, it was completely disassembled, analyzed in all of its
aspects and rebuilt just like as when it came out of the production
line in 1945. All the various layers of paint have been
thoroughly recorded, allowing to reveal the original colors and
markings. At last, a precise paint scheme that is not the result
of interpretations and speculations over 70 years' old wartime
pictures!
Another
interesting feature of 120015 is the main landing gear, as the two
legs are different: the right one is of a late Me-109 (G10-K4) while
the left one comes from a earlier Me-109 G6.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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I painted the model mostly with Gunze acrylics, RLM 81 and 82 for
the tail assembly and engine cowlings, while the wing has a "old
style" RLM 70 on top and RLM 65 on the bottom. The fuselage
is painted with Lifecolor RLM 76 while the empennages undersides are in RLM
76 by Gunze: the two colors are slightly different as seen in pictures
of the restored aircraft. The cockpit is painted with Tamiya Dark
Grey XF-24 (RLM 66) and the wheel bays with Gunze RLM 02. Some
of the markings are masked and sprayed on (fuselage and upper wing
balkankreutzen and yellow "21"), while I printed with my inkjet
printer and then heavily retouched by hand the two 1./JG 1 badges.
The rest of the decals and stencils come from the kit. I
kept weathering to a minimum because those birds didn't manage to log much
flight time.
For the concrete runway, I tried something different: genuine concrete.
I used the ready-to-use concrete+sand mix for small masonry works commonly
found in DIY stores mixed with water and white glue. First I glued
strips of thin styrene to the frame base to form the slabs' joints, then I
poured small amounts of semi-liquid concrete into the
"molds" and leveled it with an ice cream stick. I cast
only a couple of slabs at a time, because concrete cracks depending
on its curing time: if the concrete dries quickly e.g. leaving
it under the sun or using a hair drier, it will crack a lot.
Otherwise if you let it cure slowly (also by spraying it with
water from time to time) you will have little or no cracks. When the base
was completely cured, I trimmed flush the styrene strips and painted them
with thick flat black paint, to simulate the tar joints. I painted
the slabs with sepia, grey and black inks heavily diluted in water to
break the concrete monotone, then I glued some finely ground poseidonia
grass along some of the cracks to add some form of life to that bare
surface.
I hope you like it
and thanks for looking.
Lorenzo Cassinadri
Click on
images below to see larger images
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