**** DONE: GB-51 1/48 Heinkel He162A-2 Salamander - No Propellers

Very nice work Andy
That kit IS much nicer than the Dragon kit

rochie said:

as i was looking i've found just about every combo of colours for the engine intake and both sets of numerals, red, white and yellow ???

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Right! The other issue is that most pics of He162s on the net are post war and often display aircraft after they had been dismantled and shipped elsewhere. Sometimes parts were interchanged, including tail units so it can be confusing when looking at the w/nrs!

Following are some pics of the cowl area. As I mentioned earlier, the kit allows you to pose the cowls either buttoned up or open with the engine exposed. The two configurations are interchangeable on the model so you can remove a closed engine assembly from the model and add the open engine. This is accomplished with a press-fit detail involving metal pins and vinyl grommets. Here are the cowl panel innards still on the sprue:



A couple of things to note. First, I have painted the inner surfaces with Alcald Aluminum and you can see some very faint ejector pin marks. This for me was a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation in that trying to repair these marks, at least in my experience, could result in a worse looking surface than leaving it alone so I elected to leave them. Second, in order to make the panels look as realistic as possible, the walls are very thin and there are no locating pins to aid with seam alignment. Though Tamiya could have produced a different set of cowls with locating pins for the closed option, they chose to simply duplicate the sprues so the closed cowl option requires some pretty fiddly gluing.

I did manage to assemble the closed cowl with decent alignment but still had to deal with an inconsistent-looking seam so I broke out the surface primer and filled the seam, sanded it down, and scribed a new closure seam, making sure not to eliminate the dzus fastener details.



Here you can see that the intake ring is a separate moulding that fits over the closed end of the cowl. Inside, the turbine hub is mounted in a tube that fits to the inner surface of the intake ring leaving a bit of a seam that is tolerable. There is a small step between the intake ring and the side cowl panels but I will leave this alone, given all the fine rivet details that would be obliterated in the process.



That's it for now. I have a free day today and should get some more done so I'll post pics when there's something to show. Tanks again for the inputs guys.

Nice work so far Andy!

Crimea_River said:

The shoulder belts have now been scratch built and added.

View attachment 638683

I also added an oxygen hose made of solder seen here just behind the joystick. Note also the ball bearing that Tamiya provides for a balance weight. Though it can be trapped in the part provided, it rattles around a bit so I made sure there was plenty of CA holding it in place.

View attachment 638682

Thanks again for popping in for a look and for the comments.

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Those belts look great, got a nice natural, soft feel to them.

Good stuff Andy.

Thanks guys.

I press-fit the engine, wings, and tail assemblies on to take this pic. The tail fit is amazing, the wings ok and the engine.....well.....not great.




The engine is supposed to be removable and the connection is via stainless steel pins pressed into vinyl bushings. I will need to fiddle with this but I don't think this well ever be perfect if it remains unglued.

Underneath, the wheels have been fitted after adding brake lines and flattening the tires. I wish model manufacturers would include flattened tires more often as it's a pain to get the angles right on these canted wheels.



The kit gun sight has been added. The reflector glass was removed and replaced with a piece of clear acetate and the wiring was made of 0.2mm diameter lead wire.



The next step will be to paint and install the windscreen and I'll be back when that's done. Thanks again for following along.

Looking really nice, that engine does look to be an issue.

Looking good though.

Good work so far Andy!

Always amazed at you attention to details. Patience of a saint to do this kind of work. If I had not seen some of the images and them being associated with a model, I would swear I they were taken of a genuine aircraft. Someday I'll get there. My patience gets better with adult beverage consumption but unfortunately the inverse happens with the skills. Really looking forward to the paint job!

Thanks guys. Kind words indeed Ralph - thanks.

Ralph Haus said:

Always amazed at you attention to details. Patience of a saint to do this kind of work. If I had not seen some of the images and them being associated with a model, I would swear I they were taken of a genuine aircraft. Someday I'll get there. My patience gets better with adult beverage consumption but unfortunately the inverse happens with the skills. Really looking forward to the paint job!

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Ralph, it always looks better, well until tomorrow.

Very nice Andy

really nice

Lookin' good Andy.

Thanks gents. Zero bench time since we last spoke. We ran into an issue on trying to start our Hawker Hurricane. The Merlin is locked solid so developing plans to fix.

That's not a good thing. Bench time or a Merlin that won't turn over. When was the last time it did run?

We had it ticking over exactly 2 years ago.