I must be honest when I heard this kit was coming out I asked why? Do we not have enough Gustavs, including the definitive one by Eduard? Why not a new state of the art P-38, which we desperately need? I guess those were the same sentiments by most folks back in 2004 when they released their 1/48 P-47 series. Well.....truthfully, I'm not sure I would have stayed with scale modeling if it wasn't for that slice of heaven in styrene. I built the razorback and I was hooked. I figured lightning might strike twice so I grabbed one of these off ebay. It's been beckoning me ever since and had to dive in.
Next was the endless choice of subjects. I wanted one "without" the cannon pods under the wings, a true dogfighter. I ultimately decided on a machine flown by Johannes "Macky" Steinhoff when he was the CO of JG 77 in the MTO. Steinhoff had 176 kills with 152 of them being on the Eastern Front. In April of 1945, while with JV 44 home defense, he was badly burned in an Me 262 accident.
Decals for Steinhoff's machines are hard to come by for some reason. I'm hoping I can piece together these markings from my ever growing 109 decal stash. It shouldn't be too hard. I figure I'll paint on the main markings. 
I started with the cockpit. It should be no surprise that it's fantastic right out of the box. It comes with decal seatbelts, but I opted for PE. I'm out of RLM 66, so I opted for XF-24 Dark Grey. Truthfully I can't tell the difference....
I'd say the instrument panel is the weakest part of the pit. It's sort of basic and the dial decal didn't fit all that great. Looks like they missed a few dials too. I may drop a few Airscale dials in there...or maybe I won't. I suppose it's not a huge deal in this scale.
