COMPLETED - Revell 1/32 Heinkel He 111 P-1 WIP

Beautifully done. Simply outstanding build. 

BK

Fantastic build. Your cockpit framing looks outstanding and I don't know how you painted the interior details but they all look like you airbrushed each individual detail

What a resplendent beast, absolutely marvelous, I say!

knox

What a gorgeous build. You did such a great job on building and painting that monster. Thanks again for sharing your work. 

I do wish you well in your job search, although a selfish part of me wishes you would win a jackpot so you could continue to intertain us with builds.   gk

 

What a gorgeous build. You did such a great job on building and painting that monster. Thanks again for sharing your work. 

I do wish you well in your job search, although a selfish part of me wishes you would win a jackpot so you could continue to intertain us with builds.   gk

Thanks, I am glad you enjoyed it.

Regarding the great flood, we live west of Houston in Katy and west of a couple of huge reservoirs. Apparently those have not overflowed their banks, but even so we are not technically in the flood plain. I say technically because it does flood where we live, but we have been fortunate. On the first day of the rain, my street flooded but the water was draining before it got to my house and barely reached onto my driveway. 

Aggie,

This was a very informative build. Especially showing how to mask all those windows. I liked how you showed doing the panel line washes as well.  Great work and I look forward to seeing the Wellington come together.  

Also, It was a blessing that you missed the flooding, I have good friends in NW Houston that didn't fare so well.  

Good luck with the job prospect.  

The one-eleven is done.  

It is a huge kit.  It also feels fragile with all the guns and antennas sticking off it, not to mention the landing gear issues that I described earlier.  As a result, this thing proved really difficult to photograph to my satisfaction.  I typically set up a background of light beige poster board on my workbench, turn on some halogen lights, set up the tripod and set to photographing.  I have a nice sized custom-built workbench but this one proved too large to be able to position in such a way that I could get my normal clutter-free photos.

So I apologize for distracting stuff that appears in the background of some shots.  I was forced into my breakfast room, where I took over the breakfast table.  I set up some light blue poster board but I needed about six more sheets to be able to block out anything in the background.  Oh well.  So I have some full-plane shots but I think most of these are actually more close-in of specific areas of the Heinkel.

I hope you enjoy the pictures and enjoyed following my build.  This kit is a good one despite its warts (mostly instructions and MG 15 machine guns).  If you like Luftwaffe bombers and have some space to display this monster, I recommend this kit.

Full body shots:

Close-in shots:

This photograph actually reveals that I did not glue the MG 15 in the nose into place; it is moveable.  Of course, jostling this bird around can cause the gun to twist almost upside down....

And remember when I said this was going on display in my Paris-themed bathroom?  Well, here she is...

Next up?  I am sticking with WWII bombers, but this time I will be going over to the Royal Air Force and tackling Trumpeter's 1/48 Vickers Wellington Mk. III.

Ok, one final complaint about this kit.  The kit's MG 15 machine guns are garbage.  The first couple of photographs below should demonstrate why.  They appear to be incorrectly scaled!  I had purchased the Aires resin set as I had inadvertently placed all of the ammo cartridges into the storage racks strewn throughout the interior of the aircraft, not realizing (because I did not look ahead in the instruction manual) that I would need three of these guys for the machine guns.

That mistake is actually a blessing in disguise.  I doubt I would ever have guessed that the kit guns were so clearly out of scale.  Plus I didn't think they were convincing replicas.  The Aires set is a good one.

These last two shots are of completed gun parts prior to installation into the nose or ventral gondola positions.

Here are a couple of shots of the completed open turret located along the upper rear portion of the fuselage.

7474

Wow, great work on it and I can't wait to see it finished. I'm sure you got the job. I've been out of work since the end of February but next week I'm off to fly 737s. And yes, Battle of Britain is a great movie. 

 

allan

Youre doing great work on this bird! Im impressed by how well the decals conformed to the kit.

 

 

Wow, great work on it and I can't wait to see it finished. I'm sure you got the job. I've been out of work since the end of February but next week I'm off to fly 737s. And yes, Battle of Britain is a great movie. 

Youre doing great work on this bird! Im impressed by how well the decals conformed to the kit.

Let me start off by saying that today's interview, from my perspective, went very well.  It was an initial screening with HR, so I still have some bridges to cross, but given I have lots of experience in clinical trial programming, I think I was able to convey confidence and should be able to get to the next round of interviews.

Yesterday and today after the interview, I spent some time at the bench doing some touch-up painting, additional weathering, removing paint masks from the windows, and started work on the landing gear.

For the gear I installed brake lines to replicate photographs I found online.  I also smudged a mixture of Tamiya weathering compounds (sand and dirt, mostly) over the tires.

I have encountered very few problems not of my own making in building the one-eleven. But I will say again that the instructions are awful, particularly with regard to construction of the landing gear.  The gear are already pretty flimsy, but wow, the instructions use arrows to point to where some of the parts are to go.  The arrows are crossing other arrows, causing mis-direction and confusion unless one looks closely.  And the biggest gripe is the installation of the tires to the struts.  Following the directions as given results in breakage on part of the primary struts!  Are you kidding me!?  

You are to slide one end of the axle, mounted to the wheel, into one strut and then spread the struts to be able to squeeze the other end of the axle into place.  While doing this, I felt like I was likely to break something, and sure enough, when I got the tire into position, one of the support rods molded as part of the primary strut had snapped.  Even being aware of this potential did not prevent a similar breakage from occurring on the other strut.

I cannot say how Revell could have suggested to construct these parts.  Perhaps the problem is really in the mold.

I was able to get the struts into place - another struggle entirely.  Plus one of the major pieces of the landing gear was broken in two while still on the sprue.  Not sure if that was my doing or not. Still, I worked around that and next time I am at the bench I will be able to secure everything for yet another several hours of curing time.

Almost done.

jeaton01

Good luck with the job interview.

The 111 is really coming together nicely.

 

Thanks John

Good luck with the job interview.

The 111 is really coming together nicely.

Has been a good day.  Lots of bad weather in Houston, flooding all around although not directly where I live, schools closed, so I had the daughter home while my wife went to work today.  Took her to see the live-action Jungle Book movie (really good, especially Bill Murray as the bear).  Then I found out that I have been scheduled for a telephone screening interview with a company that I have applied to.  In addition, I have managed to squeeze a lot of time in at the bench.  So yeah, a good day.

I shall catch us up on some photographs.

Here are some of the last-to-install parts drying on the paint "rack".  Included are prop spinners and blades, primary tires and the antenna mast.

Next up are the exhaust stacks.  These had to be installed prior to closing up the nacelles. I had painted the stacks burnt metal before hand, but noticed many photos of completed builds where the stacks are actually a rust color.  Given that I did not have that particular color on hand, I opted to mix my own, a combination of flat black, red and brown red.  I will likely weather these stacks later with a dry brushing of burnt metal.

Next I did the dirt wash across the entire airframe, starting with the underside.  This took a good bit of time considering how much space this thing occupies on my workbench.  I used Flory Dark Dirt for the wash, then cleaned up with a dampened soft rag after giving the wash a bit of time to dry.  I repeated the process once I got home from the movie for the top side.  Even with a couple of coats of Future, the Model Master Schwarzgrun felt pretty rough - probably the paint itself.

Today I got started decaling this big bird. There are a lot of them. I did about half of them then called it a day. And thanks to 7474 for the suggestion of watching Battle of Britain. I happen to have that movie in my library, so I popped it into the DVD player and enjoyed that film immensely. Seemed historically accurate, at least regarding the general sequence of how the battle unfolded. Loved seeing all those real Spitfires, Hurricanes, Messerschmitts and Heinkels, even though those latter two were Spanish-built and not technically accurate for 1940.

Just to add my little 2 cents....De-tacking tape needs to be done on your skin. This imparts the bodily oils to the tape thus de-tacking it.  You're asking for trouble doing this on your shirt as the fuzz from the material sticks to the tape.  Just don't do it on your hairy legs....OUCH !  I use the palm of my hand and have not had any problems with MM paint pulling up.

Looking great! I use MM acrylics and initially I had a lot of problems with paint pull off.  I tried numerous primers with an occasional success. Also tried differerent thinners from water to alcohol to windex. I had a great deal of plugging issues in my airbrush. I finally gave in and use the aztek thinners. Haven't had problems since.  However I found out today that my go to primer, Homeshades is no longer carried at walmart.  I've had good luck with the gray krylon primer but it's so dark that pre-shading doesn't work

I feel your pain with the pain't, glad you overcame. I always prime and then airbrush a 1:1 ratio at 10-15PSI, any more or less I get bad results, I try to use blue tac whenever possible and let the paint fully cure. Seems to be a pretty good method for me. Keep up the great work. I'm picturing the scene in Battle Of Britain when the Spitfires intercepted the -111s without fighter escort, my favorite part. 

It is the end of an up-and-down week.  I started by masking everything.  Even after the paint pull-up shown in an above post, I thought I had a solution by simply removing as much of the tack from the Tamiya tape as I could with my shirt.

But that did not work.  I re-discovered the problem with Model Master Acryl paint not playing well with masking tape.  Next time I will remember to PRIME the model before I do anything else!

Today I was able to fix the paint lift issues I encountered last night.  Instead of using any tape, I used a piece of thin cardboard to act as a mask that I positioned by hand while spraying the AB with the other.  Very tedious but I think it turned out well.

Now she is sitting on the workbench with a coat of Future curing.  Next step is to decal this beast - and there are a lot of them.