1/48 Tamiya He 219

by Paul Cronin

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I built this kit "out-of-the-box" except for the addition of some "solder" oxygen hoses and Eduard German seatbelts.  The fit of the kit was so good that the wings and tailplanes were painted and decaled as separate assemblies and then brought together with the fuselage during final assembly.

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The aircraft was given an overall coat of RLM76 Lichtblau and mottled with RLM75 Grauviolett.  Both colours were lighted by the addition of 20% white paint.  Achieving the mottled effect was the most time consuming part of construction.  First the camouflage pattern was copying from the Tamiya line drawing, which was provided with the kit, onto heavy 24lb paper.  The areas to be sprayed with the Grauviolett were then carefully cut out using a sharp x-acto blade.  This operation took about 5 hours to complete.  Small rolls of tape were then placed in strategic locations to hold the masks in the desired locations and thinned Grauviolett was carefully applied using a Badger 200 airbrush set to spray at a very low pressure (5-7 psi).  I was very pleased with the final results.

The kit decals were used except for the swastikas which came from an old Microscale set I have.  Weathering was done using the pastel wash method which I read about on this web site. 

Paul

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Photos and text © by Paul Cronin