At
the end of 1940 a new version of the Messerschmitt 109 fighter appeared. She was
the famous and much improved Me. Bf. 109F with its -1 variant. Fitted with the
previous model’s 1200 Hp DB 601N engine she developed some “teething
problems”, like the breakdown of the entire tail when in flight. To overcome
the problem early machines were fitted with stronger stiffeners on the tail.
The new variant quickly became a very pure-bred horse and was supplied
firstly to the Channel front outstanding units, like JG 26 and JG 51.
THE
MODEL
Some
ten years ago I was presented with an old and built 1/32 Revell Kit. The
previous modeller had built and hand-brush painted it quite well, with
appropriate RLM colours, but unfortunately those colours were wrong because all
green/blues manned.
So I’ decided to dismantle it completely and rebuild it, after clearing its
parts with bleach after a bet with myself. Once I washed off the parts, I
rebuilt the kit including as many as possible details. The engine, after
painting in Humbrol “engine grey” had all the piping and wires added and
all details painted in the appropriate colours as well.
A
firewall plasticard bulkhead was added, with detailed oil radiator matrix and
drilled exhaust stacks. The cowl MG were drilled also. Other works were the
wheel wells, boxed in and entirely detailed with ribs and spars. The oleo legs
were added with brakes pipes and then fixed in place. The cockpit was fully
detailed with scratchbuilt sandwich instruments panel, the ReVi gunsight,
cloche, pedals, the MG/FF cannon fairing, and all the oxygen, fuel pipes and
other items. The pilot’s seat had the belts added on and the two
fuselage itself were stretched using some scratch plastic near the fin. Then the
entire model was assembled once again.
Since
the bad conditions of the wrecked kit it was almost impossible for me to lower
the flap/slats, and due to this I elected to fix all movable surfaces in the neutral position (“in case of doubt, better do nothing!”, by great Chris
Ellis). The folding part of the canopy was obtained cutting off the clear
windows with a hot blade, carefully sanding the remaining frames and adding its
with new polyglaze bits.
Once
assembled the kit once more it needed quite a lot of body putty filler and many
panel and details were rescribed. The four tail stiffeners obtained from
plasticard were carefully added. The 109F-1 early production batch retained
their squared wheel wells. Once completed and carefully trimmed and sanded, the
model was polished and then washed to clear off the work remnants. It was duly
masked with Maskol and received a first coat of Humbrol H64 primer paint to
reveal any flaws.
When
satisfied with it, I painted its undersurfaces in RLM76 which, with the help of
my useful FS595a book was Humbrol 127; the uppersurfaces were accordingly
painted in RLM74/75 which resulted, albeit for me, with H.32 and H.125
respectively.
Click on
images below to see larger images
When the model dried, I applied a thin layer of Humbrol gloss cote in order to
rescribe all the panels lines with a dark brown ink and apply decals. These
decals were from a Superscale sheet which comprised of Marseille’s and Moelders
mounts. I choose the Moelder’s one with the beautiful falcon insignia on
the cowl to represent the JG51’s Kommodore machine when based at S. Omer,
France, in the Spring of 1941. The decals reacted very well with Mark Softer and,
since I’ hate the swastika I left it off.
Final
steps were to spray the entire model with Humbrol satin cote and the
applications of stains and engine’ smokes with airbrush and pastels. This is
my second 1/32 kit since I started my modelling life and I tried many techniques with it.
I hope it may be quite good.
Paolo
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