1/48 Pro-Modeler Ar-234C

by Mirko Meier

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Here´s my Ar-234C. Building this kit was a really disappointing experience. As soon as the kit arrived in my workshop, I opened the box and I found the rear part of the fuselage( tail section) was bent, completely distorted. I was in serious dilemma thinking...Should I build it like that or send a complaint to Revell-Monogram in order to receive a new part??...So my thinking was...what the hell I´ll do the tail section applying some scratchbuilding....... as you may think...WROOOOOONG decision..hahahaha.

Anyway It took me a lot of time an lots of styrene sheets, lots of filling an sanding and some scribing but at last it almost looks like the real kit part.

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Another thing to say is that I've noticed that the kit looks almost exactly like the Hasegawa series of Ar-234.  As usual, I made some seatbealts to add more realism to the cockpit, also some wiring to the rudder, control panel, an oxygen line was added. After fitting the fuselage to the cockpit (which is really tricky even in the Hasegawa kits) came a lot of filling and sanding and that´s really a shame, because lots of the excellent details are simply gone with that, and rescribing them will be so tedious....

After the building was done, some Humbrol Matt Black was airbrushed all over the recessed panel lines.  After that, the usual RLM 76/81/82 camo was applied, then some gloss lacquer, decaling (which are a pain in the b.... because of the silvering even with the MicroScale decaling set) and another semigloss lacquer coat. The after 2 days of drying to let the decals and lacquer set, I applied a very subtle and light weathering with oils an pastel chalks and the kit was done.

As a final conclusion I'll have to say that the quality of the kit (besides the bended tail) is fairly good, very similar to the usual Hasegawa level of detail, and after a lot of work it looks really nice.

Mirko

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Photos and text © by Mirko Meier