This is a jump to mostly unknown in this hobby: I got myself a 1:32 Me-262 B1-/U-1 which apparently translates into a two-seater night fighter with a radar.
Building a plane stresses me out a bit, they have to be more perfect and sleek than tanks. Less forgiving. Still, something made it exciting to start with, maybe it's the tinkering.
I started with the cockpit but soon I have to do some painting. Maybe I should've already?
Slow and cautious is how I proceed, three hobby sessions done and I'm almost ready to move on to the radar operator's station behind the pilot. Looks fun, I need to apply gloss varnish on the dials before I seal the thing.
Slow indeed: in a week I've done the two-person cockpit and now the quad autocannon section. Painted simply, but painted anyway.
So far the only metallic paint I've used has been Duraluminium on the outside of the crew's armoured tub. The things that are to be sealed out of sight are all unpainted, like the nose here that expects to receive 15g of additional weights. No idea yet what or where to obtain tiny weights locally, though 🤔
Small changes in a way, but they made a noticeable difference: the airframe halves are now joined with the cannon part installed. I glued and puttied two screws into the closed lower segments (where the autocannon ejector ports are) for weighting, but nose needs more extra mass.
Soon I can seal the earlier made cockpit and start on airbrushable stuff, yay!
Lots of swearing with the fitting of the wings into the airframe. That and the wing-halves joining has always been a loathsome process: they depend so heavily on the previous steps and if one has misunderstood the instructions or slightly misaligned some bits, this is where one finds out. Way too late to fix it nicely anymore. Grumble grumble.
Unsurprisingly something had been off and I am grumbling. Maybe I can salvage it. Annoying, as I was having slow fun 😋
Swearing continued with the JuMo 004 assembly and fitting. Then I noticed I am missing half a rudder or tail fin. The latter I try to mitigate with a piece of 1mm styrene but it won't look good. That'll still be better than only the left half 😝
Building is finally far enough for me to think of the painting operation itself. I'll do the wheels separately to maybe save my nerves. To get to that I think I need to mask and seal the cockpit canopy in place. Decisions...
Ugly patching done, all the little things installed. The long antenna in the bottom poses some challenges until I get the landing gear glued in. For painting convenience I just want that crap painted separately to avoid even more swearing 😅 Those radar antlers were way easier than I expected, which was nice.
I thought I could start priming today but masking the canopy took way too long. Tomorrow, then, for the last day of a four-day weekend.
ISD