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Nine ME110'sBy Peter Marshall This is the Fujimi 48th scale 110C/D, an oldie but still the only game in town for 48th scale modellers. And fortunately it's a good one with nicely engraved panel lines and excellent fit (in the build of these five I used no filler at all). There are down sides, the most obvious being rather simple undercarriage with no wheel bay detail and a rather spurious and clunky cockpit. There have also thoughts expressed that it's a little under scale but dimensionally it seems ok though maybe the rear fuselage is a little anaemic compared to the Revell/Monogram offering.
Box TopsI understand this is a reboxing of the original 110C kit with additional parts to make the 110D options. So on six sprues of a light grey plastic we have nicely detailed parts with engraved panel lines and very clean moulding considering the age of the kit, there was no flash worth mentioning on any of the kits I made. There is one clear sprue with both open and closed canopy options. Possibly they are a little thick but quite useable.
Fujimi SpruesIncluded are two decal sheets for a whole host of aircraft, typical Hasegawa like decals, quite thick with the whites not really white. There is a reasonable amount of stencilling and the decal placement instructions are good. On the subject of instructions here we also have several separate sheets, one for the -C and one for the -D, these being the usual multi stage construction line drawings. The overall painting instructions are OK and include some interesting schemes (some of which I'm not sure about, I would love to do the 3 colour splinter but I can't find any supporting references) and a couple of colour sheets, one each for the -C and the -D. But the paint references are poor, only referring to (I assume) Gunze paints with vague descriptions like Light Blue or Dark Green. Back to the references… So how does it go together? As I said the cockpit is poor but with all that framing and quite thick plastic you're not going to see too much (unless you open it up, so I decided not to :-). So I went more or less with the kit parts, even using the decals for the main instrument panel and side console for speed. But I felt I had to do something so the pilot's seat was replaced with a Bf-109 seat from True Details and the MG-15 was replaced with an Aries part. The cockpit (painted RML66, maybe it should have been RML02?) was then installed into the fuselage halves and basically I just followed the build from the instructions. Don't forget to open the appropriate holes in the wing and fuselage underside for the fuel tanks/bomb rack (whichever you're using) and the pitot. Also on my kits I had to open up the hole for the inboard aileron mass balance, it's not mentioned and I can't see why it would be flashed over but all mine were.
At the stage of the main construction being finished, to make painting easier (and so I wouldn't knock them all off), I left off the landing light, crew ladder, aerial mast from the cockpit top, the exhausts, the loop aerial, the props and spinners, the main wheels, gun barrels, under fuselage aerial and the aerials on the lower rear fuselage. In fact for these last ones I eventually didn't use the kit parts anyway, I installed some plastic rod for the posts and used thin wire for the aerials themselves, much more to scale. I'll also mention the exhausts here. I know I should have drilled them out (at least the ones pointing up) but I was making five of these, OK? Even just doing the ones pointing up that's 60 little fiddly holes. I just couldn't face it. So I painted them black. Call me a wimp if you want, I stand by my choice. It's not like there not enough stuff to do, the masking of three of these canopies with little bits of masking tape took quite long enough, thank you.
Many of your options during the build are related to the various sorts of fuel tanks and it might be worth mentioning here that the 300 litre tanks are somewhat undersized. It's noticeable but on the -D I was doing here they're not used anyway. The large, 1200 litre belly tank that I was using is shown on the box art with obvious ribbing detail visible whereas the kit part is smooth. I decided to live with it; life's too short….
So onto paint and decals. Whereas with the other marks I was going to use aftermarket decals I didn't have any for the -D so I went with the kit items. The panel lines were preshaded with black and then the aircraft upper was painted RML71 and the undersurface RML65 (all paints were Xtracolor, BTW) and the decals applied. As mentioned they are typical Hasegawa, thick, off white, adequate. They behaved themselves. Then it was a coat of matt with a little semi matt to give it a slight sheen followed by a few light sprays of light grey and reddish black where the exhaust staining should be and then onto the little bits. Most were fine except the landing light which seemed overly large and took some trimming, certainly worth dry fitting first (I didn't the first time, learn from my mistakes). The aerials from the mast to the tail were done with my favourite thin wire. The gun barrels were the last thing I spent time on. The kit parts are just lengths of more or less circular section rod, the real thing had flash suppressors and the like. I made some from appropriately sized bits of rod, again I should have drilled them out but having made 20 gun barrels I couldn't be bothered. I think I'm getting lazy. There we go, 1 down, 8 to go….Next Last updated 04 November 2007 |
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