Category: German aircraft
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Messerschmitt Me 109 E – Part Two – Airfix’s Steady Earner
The old saw about selling people bread applies to the scale model business as much as it does to bakeries. If people want bread, you bake bread. Never mind the fact that every other establishment in town also turns out loaves – and put aside your enthusiast’s desire to bake upside-down unicorn croissants…bread sells, and…
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Messerschmitt Me 109E – Part One – The Internet Delivers Again
If you have nothing to do for the next few hours, start Googling. Tear yourself away from the porn, conspiracy theories, and on-line shopping and research something arcane. I just did and now I can have a week of fun with it. I don’t build aircraft with certain markings – which is somewhat of a…
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Heinkel He 111 – Part Seven – RAFwaffe
The Heinkel He 111 is done and I am very pleased. It has already visited RCAF WET DOG and been photographed. She’s got no guns or bombs aboard, but three RAF test crewmembers are buttoned up in there – as period photos show. Presumably the RAF A/B upper scheme and bright trainer yellow undersides would…
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Heinkel He 111 – Part Six – The Irresistible Shot
If you go to any book on the Battle of Britain or any Google site that deals with the Heinkel bombers you will eventually see a shot of the crew inside the glass-nosed cockpit. It will have been taken from the bomb-aimer’s position looking backward at the pilot’s seats and will likely have been shot…
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Heinkel He 111 – Part Five – On Your Feet
I am always eager to get a plane on its feet. And then I’m not, when I look and see what the manufacturers have moulded. So many of them make a set of landing gear that can never support the plane and is miserable to install. It is one of the stations on the model-building…
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Heinkel HE 111 – Part Four – The Elegant Wing
Some aeroplane wings are ugly things. Go look at the Junkers Ju52 in broad daylight. Some are incredible – get out a picture of a B-36. And some, like this Heinkel HE 111 wing, are pieces of real sculpture. Don’t look too long at the engine nacelles – they were covered in an earlier post.…
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Heinkel HE 111 – Part Three – The Aerodynamic Engine
I do not know enough about the differences between British and German aero engines to be able to debate their good and bad points. Suffice it to say I think the British practice of mounting the Merlin engine upright seems to be a darn sight more sensible than the inverted Daimler Benz of the German…
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Heinkel HE 111 – Part Two – Nothing Looks Like An Airplane…
You can get into a rut in model airplane building. I do planes that are mostly British or American types. Sometimes a Soviet job, or the rare Japanese one. In all these cases they have distinctive national characteristics quite apart from paint jobs or insignia. There are styles of fuselages, wings, and engines. Some are…
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Heinkel HE 111 – Part One – Welcome To The Rafwaffe
Yes, you read that right. Rafwaffe. Specifically 1426 Flight RAF. The unit that took captured and abandoned German equipment and tested it for the RAF. At Duxford and RAF Collyweston. They got one of the Heinkel 111’a that had been downed to a soft landing early in the war over the UK and repaired and…
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Why Did You Want To Build That One?
If someone looks at your newly-completed scale model and asks you that question, you can give a good, cogent answer. If you ask the question of yourself, you are in trouble. If you cannot come up with an answer…you’re sunk. Or are you? There are some things that you cannot see clearly – some things…
The Little World 