Luft46's Blog

Well both these L46 resin kits have drained my mojo at the canopy stage. Both kits have all the parts cut out and trimmed up but fitting the canopies has dragged on and I have stopped for now.

I intend to do some airbrush practice over the long weekend and a brief clean of the desktop. I will probably start on something else for the moment.

Some Archer transfers decals arrived today also with some of the creature eyes already packed up to give to a friend.

Currently I’m working on both the Heinkel Wespe and the Fw Triebflugel. The Wespe is on its 6th or 7th PSR cycle for fitting the damned canopy ( bottom left) and the Triebflugel is moving along except for the wings, cutting these out and getting them straight along the edge is proving problematic but that’s tomorrows job. The cockpit is painted ( bottom right ) but needs some fettling to fit.

I’m still yet to cut out the nine engine pieces and the four tailplanes but again a job for tomorrow as its a day off.

Below is some of the Triebflugel (sadly this word comes up as an option after only 3 letters ) parts. Top left is the bottom of the body which I’ve already cut the moulding plug off. Some of the other parts are marked in black to indicate how much resin will be carved off. The moulding is very good quality with nice panel lines and rivet marks.

I’ve just test fitted the canopy and whilst it’s fine on the front and back the sides have gaps which explains the Milliput you see below.

I can do a couple of other things tonight but this will need to get sorted tomorrow for any other progress to occur. Cutting out the Triebflugel parts may be a backup exercise tomorrow.

Firstly I’ve got to report that the Delphin sub is now at paint ready stage so it’s back in its box in the ready to paint shelf.

I had the other day off and when I was about to commence looking for something new a parcel arrived. Unexpectedly the two resin kits I had ordered from ABK in the Czech Republic after just a week. Quite amazing especially in these times.

Taking a leaf out of Earl Martells book the kit boxes were broken down so that they could fit in the smallest space possible to save on postage.

As one of the kits was a Triebflugel – of which I already have a completed Huma kit I felt that the Heinkel Wespe should be first. It really is a nice kit, nice parts including a single piece canopy. Yes you will need to do clean up but the moulding is done so that if possible the cutting will be through a thin section of resin. The instructions are quite clear and the 3 parts of the circular ducting are numbered on the sprue via little dots so that it is clear which is which. I used a marker pen to indicate this for after the moulding stubs were removed.

A lot of thought has gone into this kit and whilst it isn’t cheap I would thoroughly recommend it on what I have seen so far

So far this Mikro Mir limited run kit has been relatively easy with no major issues UNTIL you get to fitting the torpedo fins. The channel each fin is meant to go into is undersized in both depth, length and width. The first two are not great but I’ve just eyeballed the remaining two and they are much worse. The end result is that the back portion of the torpedo is split and will need regluing but I’m waiting till all four go on before doing that as each fin requires custom fitting and will need Milliput to fill the unfortunate gaps that this process has caused. Its almost a show stopper but as there are so few parts to go I intend to soldier in so that it can go back into the box as ready to paint.

Still on the Delphin which up till now has been good. Unfortunately the fins for both the submarine and its torpedo are poor fitting and need a bit of fettling which has slowed progress. This has meant another round of PSR is underway. I’m still working on the torpedo fins.

It’s been bloody cold in my garage workbench so not much modelling this weekend.

This is not a bad kit but does need a bit of filling. I used my chosen filler – Milliput along with some IPA , a needle and a scalpel to have a go at this. I’ll be using some silver paint to look for issues with my efforts so far. This filling was very fiddly and seemed to take forever. There’s a surprisingly large amount of grooves to fill. I’m yet to do the one in the bottom of the mouth

Bad puns aside I’ve recently started in on the MicroMir German WW2 experimental sub.

I’ve got to be honest and say that given the torpedo is about twice the length of the sub I don’t believe this was really a viable option. Anyway as I model Luft46 stuff I can’t really say that this KM46 sub is too bad.

The kit is typical short run in that the fit is a little crude with no locating pins but with extra interior detail including brass its a surprisingly fun kit to build.

The last three shots are of the interior before I sealed it all up. The etched brass strips for around the blue oxygen cylinders were replaced with painted Tamiya tape as the brass just wouldn’t bend properly.

Current progress is that I’m on the second cycle of PSR and it may need a third for some minor bits including the torpedo. It’s still on the workbench being worked on.

This kit fell by the wayside as I was due to add two parts that I couldn’t find. From the instructions it was something like A11 and A12 but in actual fact it was D11 and D12.

I came back to the kit after a while and had a proper look and found the instructions were wrong.

So starting again I had a good look at all I had including the reference book I had. This caused me to decide to do this as a Moscow outdoor museum exhibit. It needed a couple of minor changes including removing the end of one of the guns.

In the course of my last efforts I had also lost a part which fortunately was relatively easy to duplicate from a part in my spares drawer.

I’ve added some DAS to the base but this needs some more work soon. Temporarily it’s slowed but this is mostly due to the cold weather as painting is not an option.