The He 100 from SH in 1/32 has been on my “to buy” list for quite some time, namely since I laid eyes on Hannant’s website when I found out about it on my first trip to London last decade. A friend that goes regularly to Miami and buys from Sprue Brothers accepted to buy me this kit with Eagle Cals 32-121 decal sheet to replace the stock ones, and that’s how I got it!
The plane represents a what if He 100D flown by Fritz Losigkeit, replacing his Bf 109E-1 for this more elegant aircraft. I also thought on painting this one as Bf 109E-1 “Yellow 12” with a yellow nose, but the big Devil head won.
This is my second Special Hobby kit, and before buying it I checked several websites looking for pitfalls and other troublesome areas. The ones I found online were the canopy fit, fragile and wobbly landing gear, and wingroot gaps, but wasn’t aware of the poor fit of the tail wheelwell and the rear pilot’s bulkhead that blancked off the empty rear fuselage. After trimming the parts a bit, I was able to fit them. The wingroot gaps were solved by adding a spreader sprue under the cockpit to widen the lower fuselage, this solved the issue and allowed to use less filler than anticipated.
Knowing the landing gear struts wouldn’t hold the weight of the kit in the long run, I added some pieves of sprue as reinforcements before I added the legs. Once they were added, I applied some glue to those reinforcements and the legs, plus some epoxy just to be sure. The result: a resistant landing gear, though I won’t be making it takeoff and land, just to be sure.
Reminds me back when I flew flight sims, there was one called Screamin’ Demons Over Europe (SDOE) and it was the first sim where people who knew what they were doing could create new planes to fly and the He-100 was the first one user-created.
I was really into building WW2 plans back in the 70’s and one of my favorite planes at the time was the Messerschmitt Me262 that was the first jet that the Germans developed.
Your Heinkel turned out great. I’ve always gone back on forth about getting this kit. Makes you wonder if this [plane would’ve won the competition with the Me-109, if it would’ve lasted as long as the 109.
That’s a sweet build. This is one German aircraft that I’m surprised hasn’t been kitted more frequently, as it has great lines and just looks like it would have been a fine fighter.
That’s also true, maybe we’ll see Hobby Boss or Trumpeter release a mainstream 100, hopefully with options for the Heinkel He 113 in service as a what if, or real life schemes.
