1/48 Dora Wings Messerschmitt Bf-109B

Nicely done so far!

Sooooo... back to the workbench! Triathlon season is now over and my last race is done - excellent time to get back to the 109.

In the past month, in between training sets, I did manage to get some of the more mundane tasks done. The undercarriage and some of the control surfaces have been removed from the trees and all traces of flash and mold seams have been removed. Tedious work and no pictures but a job that needs to be done.

Over Easter I took the opportunity to fit the cockpit tub to the starboard fuselage half. As I noted earlier, the instructions called for the cockpit tub to be assembled and then fitted when closing up the fuselage. This worried me when doing some test fitting so I elected to go this way instead, with the added benefit of allowing more room to fit some of the small, fiddly PE bits on the starboard side (You might be able to see some of them in the second shot below).

The IP has also been fitted.

One item that the instructions called to be fitted at this stage was the reflector gun sight. The kit supplied this part as a very finely molded resin part. Whilst the fine details were incredible, the part was full of bubble holes and needed a lot of correction/filling to bring it up to standard. In the process of trying to fix the resin part it popped out of my fat fingers and disappeared somewhere into the void!!!! (Pretty sure that both PE and resin parts disappear into another dimension...).

So, having lost the resin part I was forced to "make" a replacement from styrene and PE bits as you can see below. Not painted or with the reflector glass fitted at this stage, but I am pretty pleased with the way it looks at this stage.

I think the leather pad (bright white piece on bottom side) might be a bit too big but I think I'll leave it alone as it was really time-consuming to get to this point and I don't want to have remake it if I stuff it up. Paint will be next and then fitting the reflector glass, then set it aside until later to fit (probably when the cockpit goes on so I don't accidentally break it in the meantime).

Lot's more to do this week, more updates to follow. Thanks again for looking in.

Very nice scratch work. If there's a way to secure that gun sight to the panel later in the build then you may want to consider it, otherwise your piece of art may join its brethren in the parallel universe.

Looks great so far!

Thanks for the encouragement gents! Had some unexpected hold ups - work got in the way. Hoping to get back to the bench later today and tomorrow.

Ah, Work !
Yes, I vaguely remember that ............................. great to be retired !!
Looking forward to the next update.

It would have been alright if it was paid work - alas it was a freebie for a mate!!!!

Anyhoo - back to the update. I managed to get the fuselage together on the weekend. Earlier in the build I noted that there seemed to be a twist in the molding which threw the alignment of panel lines and edges out by a fraction. Sure enough - it was pretty tricky to make sure it all lined up. In the end I pinned the tail section together and slowly worked my way forward, pulling the twist out as I went. A bit tedious, but I think it turned out reasonably well.

It's a bit hard to see, but the panel lines are almost straight with the only real fixes required to the front edge of the cockpit and the "firewall" behind the engine which required some shaving back to make a seamless edge for each. One other issue is with the rear cockpit panel at the top which will require some additional work and filler to make it all clean and tidy. The next shot shows the firewall and the cockpit edge a little more clearly - you can see that it might need just a tiny bit more work to be perfect.

The next shot is the underside. I'm really happy with the way it turned out - only a tiny bit up near the rear tail wheel needs attention. There is the slightest misalignment on the panel lines, nothing that is not fixable.

Finally, I mentioned earlier that I spent some time cleaning up seams and flash from the undercarriage parts. The results are below. Also included what I think is a supercharger intake from the topside of the engine (not an expert on Jumo engines) showing where I have started the process of filling some pretty big sink marks. As noted the kit is really quite detailed, but the amount of flash and molding issues do let it down a bit - still better than the last kits I made years back however.

On the main oleo's are the mounting points for the telescopic section braces, which are PE parts in this kit. I'm toying with the idea of drilling across the mounts and inserting a mounting pin (brass) and then attaching the PE braces to the pins - all just to make it more intricate and interesting. Not sold on the idea yet - still thinking about it...

On the subject of the telescopic sections I am going to implement Terry's idea for the "gators" using PVA. Will have to experiment a bit first, but I'll be keen to see how this turns out. I will probably also thin out the tail wheel bracing elbow as it looks a bit thick compared to some line drawings I found recently.

I better stop now before I think up more fiddly and frustrating things to do with this kit - gotta learn to keep my initial goal of OOB in my thinking...

Thanks again for looking in on progress.

Looking good.

Looking good so far!

Managed to do a bit more over the weekend, in between the jobs list from SWMBO...

Finished up the rear cockpit section - filled in the gaps and tried to smooth it out without losing the panel door details. Not perfect but good enough under the rear canopy section. Splashed on some colour for both the cockpit and engine, picking out the plug leads with some grey coloured pencil. I had toyed with the idea of replacing plugs and leads with brass rods and lead wires respectively, but as the engine will not be seen (unless I leave the cowl loose) it seemed like a significant amount of wasted effort. I am conscious this is the first model I've done in over 30 years so if I want to actually finish it then its best just to leave off a lot of ideas for scratching.

I've also assembled the wings including the wheel well bays and sprayed on some colour. Still some clean up to do, along with adding the PE bits for the zipper around the circular section of the well.

The wings have now also been attached to the fuselage. No photos at this stage, but I am pleasantly surprised with how well the overall fit has worked. I cant see any major gaps to be filled or corrected, but I'll do a more thorough inspection later this week to be sure.

It's finally starting to feel like I am making progress with this kit - I am actually having a lot of fun!

Thanks for looking in.

Good stuff.

Good work. Fun is what it's all about.

Nicely done so far!

Beauty

Thanks for the encouragement gents! Hoping to get back to the bench on the weekend. It's turned a bit too cold here to be working out in my garage at night - must be getting soft in my old age...

Soooooo......

After a break just over 12 months to pursue an unexpected business opportunity, which has now been destroyed by our friendly neighbourhood corona virus, I have finally found my way back to the work bench.

I've not done much really, but at least some parts have been cleaned up and added to the engine. Not painted yet - been a bit too cold. Apologies for the crappy focus on the shot - bit out of practice with the camera.


I'm hoping to get more done in the next week, maybe even roll out some paint and slap it on...

Thanks for looking in.