For my first aircraft WIP I’m building Tamiya’s 1/48 He-219 A-7 Uhu, which I’m also building for the Reich Defenders V Group Build. Here’s the box:
The parts all look really nice with fine detail. Something Tamiya did that I thought was pretty clever was to make the cockpit floor/nosegear bay out of metal, which means you don’t need to add any weight to the nose to keep it from being a tail sitter. I forgot to take a picture of it before I primed it and started painting it, but here it is anyway:
I’ve just about finished the cockpit. I didn’t weather the cockpit too much as these planes were relatively new and well cared for. Essentially all I did was some drybrushing and a wash. Something I thought was strange was Tamiya didn’t supply decals for any gauges other than those on the instrument panel in front of the pilot. I raided some spares to fill in. I still need to put the straps on the foot pedals and the seatbelts. The kit comes with decal seatbelts, which normally I hate. However, when I built the Accurate Miniatures SBD-5 Dauntless, I put them on the metal foil that comes on wine bottles to make them thicker and easier to pose. I’m going to try to print my own seatbelt decals since the ones in the kit look horribly wrong. If that doesn’t work out or look right, I’ll have to order some photoetched belts to put on. Here’s where I’m at:
Oh Man! You are off to a great start there SB. Cockpit is looking sharp. I’m going to enjoy watching you build this. One of the few kits I don’t have in my stash but, your efforts just might put me over the top.
Holee shmokes!! One of my favorite all time aircraft and just so happen to have this one in my stash with a whole slew of goodies for it. My brother bought it for me around 5 years ago from Hobby Lobby( You 'member…back when they actually had cool aircraft kits). I’ll be watching this one for sure!!! Looking good so far buddy!
Thank you gentlmen, this aircraft has really grown on me. I hadn’t heard too much about it until a couple of years ago when I visited the Udvar-Hazy Center in DC where they only had the restored fuselage on display. The more I learned about it, the more I started to like it.
SB, first off great start! Cockpit looks perfect! As far as printing seatbelts, ajd3530 just hooked me up with a gentlemen who lives in the same town as me (I know what are the chances!), anyway he runs a sign making business and prints off sheets with Luftwaffe, US, and British belts on them (1/48 & 1/32 scale). I just picked them up last night and haven’t been able to try them out on a build but you can take a look at them on ajd3530’s build over on the Mustang GB pg 33. Just another possible option. Keep up the great work!
Thank you! They are decals that come in the kit. I dry brushed the panel before I applied the decals, then hit them with Micro Set and Micro Sol. Afterwards I did a thin black wash and then a blast of Testor’s dull coat. When that dried a put a drop of Future on each of the dials to simulate glass.
That metal cockpit is a really good idea. There’s got to be a market for AM metal cockpits, particularly for those notorious tail sitters! I’ll be keeping an eye on this one as I have always wondered how folks manage to align all the antennas on the front.
Real life managed to get in the way of bench time, but I’ve been able to snag a few minutes here and there. I finished the main landing gear bays and assembled the main components of the wings. I thought the landing gear bays were a little sparse…
So I added a bit of detail to them based on a picture of the ZM 1/32 kit. I didn’t add as much as I could have, but I don’t have a whole lot of experience with scratchbuilding. I think it looks busy enough anyways.
And the completed wings…
After spending the better part of a week trying to get the decal seatbelts to look right, I gave up. Luckily, I saw a deal for PE seatbelt sets on Ebay so I picked a few up. And they look much better.
Fuselage is closed up and ready to move on to the next bit
