1/48 Hasegawa Junkers Ju-87B-2 Stuka

by Mark Buchler

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This is Hasegawa's excellent Ju87B-2 in 1/48 scale. This kit went together well, although careful attention went into the alignment of certain parts, most notably where the nose assembly attached to the fuselage. Another area of concern is the small support struts under the stabilizer. Do not use the locator holes on the fuselage for these struts, or your stabilizers will droop downward. Keeping proper horizontal alignment on the stabilizers will mean gluing the struts slightly above the holes in the fuselage, and filling these holes in later. 

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The kit was built basically out of the box, with a few minor modifications.  First, Hasegawa elected to mold the main flap actuators (under the wing) as a filled-in triangle, rather than a more accurate bent rod shape. I took my rotary tool and a fine tip cone grinding bit and opened them up, giving them the appearance of how they are on the actual plane.

Next, there is no wing landing light provided (just the clear cover), so I scratched one from spare sprue plastic. Without it, you will have an ugly gaping hole in the wing. If you do this modification, don't do what I did and wait until the wing halves were glued together (duh!). No, no, do it beforehand. 

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Colors were ModelMaster enamels, in the standard Luftwaffe RLM 70/70 splinter, with RLM76 Lichtblau underside, with pre-shading applied beforehand. Hasegawa provides the builder with full size splinter paper patterns, which greatly accelerated the stencil cutting/application process.
Be sure to use photocopies, rather than the originals, should you mess up and need to re-cut a pattern! The canopy was masked with Scotch frosted tape, and cut with a sharp #11 blade, prior to paint application. Decals were good quality and went on without issues, and set with a diluted solution of Solvaset. I then applied detail wash, and a final coat of ModelMaster flat lacquer.

Mark

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Photos and text © by Mark Buchler