1/48 Hobbycraft Dornier Do 17Z and ICM Do 215 B-4

Looking forward to the pics.

Ok, as promised some pictures of my progress.

First up, ICM's Do 215's Tail issue...

While looking at some pics in a older book, I found this;

As you can see, there is some kind of plate mounted on the Dorniers tail. Even though this is a Do 17Z, the tail unit is the same for a Do 215.


Here you can see ICM's Do 215's tail compared to a scal drawing on 1/48. As you can see, the tail is grosely oversized and the moving parts of the tail are undersized. However, as a whole the tail unit has the correct outline.



First, I glued on a square of evergreen plastic, to represent the plate that is seen on the pic of the Original aircraft.




And finally (after a lot of fiddling with sandpaper, needle files, putty and whatever more) we get an acceptable Do 215 Tail... Phew...
As you can see some work still needs to be done, but you get the idea

Ok, next up...The HC 17Z's engines.
Looking at pics of the real thing, I came tot the conclusion that Hobbycraft took (another) shortcut on the engines. In fact these are a mere representation of the Dornier 17 M/P engines, which were earlier Bramo/Siemens engines and not a representation the Bramo 323 engines.
So, I did a lot of work on the engines. Unfortunatly, I've seam to have lost my "In progress" pictures of making the engines, so I can only show the end result. In short, I made the "star" which held the engine covers in place as can be clearly seen on pictures of the actual Do 17Z. I also changed the "engine rockers" (or whatever these parts are called) to a much thinner diameter from 0.50 mm copper wire. And painted the engines as Bramo 232. There are still some inaccuracies, but what can be seen of the engines once the props are installed will make it more then passable imho...


I've also glued 2 of the 4 Falcon clear parts replacements onto the 17Z. these fit better then expected. As the instructions are quiete vague on what to cut away and what not.

And last for today (and most likely for the comming weeks) some pics of the Do 215.
I had to use some putty, though this is more due to the builder then the kit.
Although the engine covers needed some work to propperly fit. I guess ICM want you not to glue this, so you can show the beautiful engines. But I decided to glue them as I want to keep the "fast" line of the Daimler Benz engined Do 215. Imho the Do 17Z looks much more aggresive then the Do 215 when looked on straight ahead.

Very nice fix

Looking good. But IMHO there wasn't any special plate attached to the tail top. It was just the panel of the fuselage.The thickness and appearance of the one in your picture seems to be an effect of the snow gathered there. Also there should be , between the fuselage top and the stabilizers , a gap that is a result of setting the proper angle of attack for the stabilizer, I would say.

And last some small stuff like the Mg's, buckles and Belts (Airwaves and Eduard) all painted up.
I inserted some thin guitar string in the Mg's after I cut them in two. I will add the barrels later once the kit is painted, decaled and wheatered to avoid breaking them numerous times. Some extra work for sure, but something I won't reggret later on.. (Ask me how I know )

Thanks Wojtek for those wonderfull pics. I wrote "plate" but I meanth to say "Floating tail". It's a kind of my solution to alter the kits tail as ICM for some reason missed this on their kit. I know my "solution" is not 100% correct as far as the tail goes, (as this would mean to reposition the tail planes as a whole) but once blended in with the paintwork I think it's passable.

I've seen a pic of a Do 17 Z tail after it was shot up by a spit or hurricane and the part I called the plate looked like it was openened up with a can opener. I think it was some kind of pannel. (If I can find the pic I mentioned, I'll post it here as well)

Great work.

Looks good so far!

Yesterday I managed to close both cockpits of the kits (after struggling for a few hours with the etched seatbelts from Airwaves (Do 17Z) and Eduard (Do 215) and installed the clear parts. I had to do some "wigglin" as the "compas?" on top of the instrument pannel on the ICM Do 215 interfered with the Mg 17. I cut a small part of the compas, which is hidden after the Mg 17 magazine and therefore not visible.

The Squadron/Falcon clear vac parts went on the HC Do 17Z without much problems. There where no problems with guns interfering as the version I'm building carried no guns in it's post war service.

I "think" I can now safely say I have beaten the Hobbycraft kit into submission...Though comparing it to the newer ICM kit makes it obsolete.
However, If one want's to try a vacu kit, I think this hobbycraft kit is a good start. In all, the only difference is you don't have to cut out the parts from the plastic sheet, the rest however is quiet the same imho and a good start for some serious scratch building and detailing...

Anyway, I hope to add the final details to both kits soon and finally start adding some colour!!!
Pics (hopefully) soon.

Nice work man....

Some great work , well done

Well, it's been a while but I finally got something done on both Dornier models. Since I put in a lot of work in these so far, I decided to take it slow. So last week I had some time on my hands and started painting.
First up is Hobbycraft's Do 17-Z3 finished as a Post War F.A.F Reccon/Mapping aircraft. The very few photo's I found of this aircraft show a very bleached out upper/worn airframe. The aircraft still wore it's WWII camouflage but with the "Hakristi" (Finnish Swastika's) painted out and replaced with small roundels.
I tried to replicate the worn pattern. I found no exact camo pattern for this aircraft, so it was based on another sister aircraft. The F.A.F's Do 17Z's wore a camo of Black/Olive green over a blue that was very close to RLM 76 Lightblue. I mixed my own colours from Revell/Humbrol/Aeromaster and ModelMaster enamels.


I tried some new (to me) painting techniques. I started with a black basecoat over a primer followed by a squigle pattern of light gray and some light brown on both upper and lower surfaces. On top of this I started painting various very light and heavely thinned paints. Going from dark to light and carefully adding some Humbrol Maskol on some painted parts with a cocktail stich un which I glued a tiny piece of insulation sponge (Found in the packaging of Aires resin update parts) and adding more layers of paint on top of it. This results in a subtle worn paint scheme for the underside of this aircraft model. As all previous Eastern Front markings were painted out, I added a light coat of RLM 76 over the previous painted yellow wing tips.

For the top I did a simelar thing, but adding light grey and a light tan brown to both the black and olive paint. This gave the topside a washed out look. I'm quiet happy with how the paint job turned out.
I realized the Hobbycraft tail was wrong (it represented the earlier Do 17 E/F/M/P tail) so I added some plastic card and shaped it like the ICM Do 215 tail and while I was ad it, I made a tail light and the formation lights for the wings and added these as well.

I think the Maskol Method works quiet good. I picked it up from the Armour builders at my local club. I tried to emulate the so called "hairspray method" (which apperently only works with non laquer paints, though I'm not convinced it really is...)
So far it turned out to be a good alternative, but more labour intensive though also more controlable.

And Next up, ICM's Do 215. Same M.O. as the Hobbycraft kit. This one will be a Hungarion version. As the R.H.A.F. got it's aircraft from Luftwaffe Units, they were not brand new As ICM paint guid is incomplete for this version, I used other refferences gathered from the www for this particular Do 215. I found two interesting pictures of a Hungarian Do 215 sitting on a Ukranian Airfield medio '42. Even though non of the pics are very clear they show some interesting details. For instance you can see the previous LW markings are painted out (Serials on the fuselage) and new Hungarian codes are painted on. The underside show (albeit not very clear) that the German crosses are overpainted and replaced with smaler Hungarian markings. Then there is also the mottle on the lower fuselage, which seam to vary accourding to various sources, the pictures are not clear on this as well.) So 'till now, I only did the base camo. I'm also happy how the reworked tail looks under a coat of paint. It resembles the pictures of the actual tail much more now then what ICM did i.m.h.o.)

Very nice

Really nice work.