**** DONE: 1/48 Me262B-1a/U1 - The Jet Age.

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nice choice John I've got the italeri version will be watching with interest
 
Hopefully Andy will join in with his Dragon/DML 262 so you'll have an apples to apples comparison. I'm happy with the Hobby Boss kit so far... good detail and good fit.
 
Thanks guys! Especially the great reference pictures... very helpful! Putzing around with a few bits and pieces right now. I am not intending to show any hatches open but have assembled the cannons out of curiosity and just in case the barrel ends are visible through the nose cowl. I hollowed the barrel ends with a sharp #11 x-acto blade.


Back to the cockpit... after wiring up the back of the instrument panel, it was painted. Dark Gray in the front and black in the back. The instrument panel dials were punched out individually from the decal.


The seats were painted and Eduard photo-etched seatbelts were attached. I "pre-bent" the shoulder harnesses prior to attachment... put a little wiggle into them with tweezers so that they would not lie completely flat.


Pre-fitting the cockpit tub to check on the fit and to see what is and isn't visible from the outside. I still have to do a bit of detail painting in the cockpit.


I am also curious to see how all of the fuselage panels fit. It may be easier to fit the panels now while the fuselage halves are still separate so I will explore that option.
 
Looking good so far John.


I'll probably take the plunge on the weekend and start on my Dragon kit. The red 12's and the related WNr's will be in the mail to you by then. Wojtek, good pic of red 8 after the capture. Shows that the braces were added later.
 

Looking forward to it Andy!

And thanks to everyone else for their input! Just a few minor things to report as this build cruises along. I took another shot at the radar array using stretched sprue. Looks much more to scale now.



Did a little more detail painting to the cockpit.


While checking the fit of the cockpit tub to the fuselage, I noticed a weird "ridge" along the bottom edge of the fuselage that extends from nose to tail. I'm guessing that the fuselage required a two-piece mold in order to capture the characteristic triangular cross section of the Me262.


I addressed this with combination of x-acto knife scraping and various grades of sandpaper.
 
Thanks for the reference Sergio! That will be useful information to me. I have an extra nose wheel that I can send to you Andy but no mains. I posted a picture of it on your post. Creeping along with my build... the panels that house the cannon ejection ports are separate pieces.



I glued the panels while the fuselage halves are separate to make sure I get the best fit. I used some Milliput White "sculpted" with a wet paintbrush to get gapless panel lines.



The kit comes with both a metal and plastic nose wheel well. No difference in detail between the two so I used the metal one so I don't have to load as many weights into the nose. I added some lead wiring.



After cleaning up the main wheels, I added some wire detail to simulate the brake lines.



Landing gear struts wired up and painted.



The nose gear is a bit difficult to install after the fuselage halves are put together so I am assembling it now and will protect them with foil or tape.

 

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