Eduard bf110E
This build was featured in Jan 2007 issue of Scaled Aircraft Modelling
Please click on any of the pictures to see a larger image.
The Messerschmitt
bf110 was conceived as a twin engine heavy fighter. Despite having early success
against Poland and France, it was deemed a failure when it was opposed by the
RAF Spitfires. Even though they were largely withdrawn from its intended role in
the Western front, it saw its potential as a night fighter and as a fighter
bomber on the Eastern front. For Luftwaffe modelers, the bf110 would be right
behind the bf109s and fw190s in terms popularity. So it's somewhat surprising
that in 1/48th scale, the only modern kit of this aircraft is Revell/Monogram's
G series. If you wanted to model the C, D, or E series, you had to settle for
the old Fujimi kit with its spartan cockpit details. Well, Eduard has jumped
into the fray with the bf100 E, one of the more anticipated releases for 2007 in
September. From all reports, the kit’s 'prerelease' at the US IPMS Nationals had
the boxes flying out the door.
The kit comes in
the now standard Eduard sturdy box with some wonderful box art of the 110 in
Wespen nose markings going against a P-16 over the Eastern Front. Upon opening
the box, you will be greeted by over 300 parts in the gray-green plastic. The
details are fine and restraint, no sink marks or defects, just some flash in
some smaller parts. The high parts count is somewhat deceiving in that there are
many unused parts. More than half of Sprue D is unused, which means a bunch of
nice fuel tanks and rocket tubes for your spare box. These parts are all slated
for future releases. As this article was being written, Eduard already announced
the C model kit. There’s even a ‘dachshund’ belly fuel tank on one of the sprues,
so you know a D model will also be available sometime in the future. In addition
you have two clear sprues for the canopy, with different parts to pose the
canopy open or close. There are also two PE frets, one of which is in color
(photo 1). These are all meant for enhancing the cockpit. If you are one of
those who don't like PE's, Eduard has provided the instrument panel with raised
details in plastic. There's also a decal sheet which allows five different
aircrafts to be built along with full stencils (photo 2). Masks are
provided for the canopy, which is a real time saver for this particular
aircraft. Finally, a resin dachshund is provided just as an extra. They actually
come in three different poses, but each kit will randomly contain one of these
(photo 3). The instructions come in a 20 page glossy booklet with a brief
history and five pages of full color for markings and stencil. A very impressive
package indeed when you first open this box.
Following the
directions, I started with the cockpit’s pilot area. As you build the side
panels, you will immediately be faced with some very small parts. Eduard has
wisely decided to use plastic instead of PE for parts that require a more
3-dimensional representation. To overcome the shortcomings of injected plastic
vs. resin, they have separated out many parts which would usually be molded
together. A good example is the throttle where each throttle lever is a separate
piece. Along with PE, this little item of equipment is comprised of 7 pieces.
When first faced with the levers, I realized that there were no locating holes
and there was no way these pieces will stay intact during the build. So I
drilled holes into the hosing with a pin vise to allow a stronger bond. The
pedals are offered in plastic or in PE, which are much more detailed and finer
in appearance. (photos 4, 5) This
combination of using each material to their best advantage can be seen even
before the cockpit is painted. If you use the colored PE instrument panel, it
actually comprises of 6 separate pieces glued on top of a blank plastic panel.
Some care and patience with gluing and PE folding will be required, but when
installed next to the painted throttle shows that the effort is well worthwhile
(photo 6).
We then move onto
the gunner and radio operator station. Ammunition drums and bottle are provided.
The bright blue color of the bottles adds a bit of life to an otherwise gray
area. Machine guns are also provided for mounting underneath the floor, but it
will be almost completely hidden once the fuselage is closed up. The ammunition
drums at the radio operator station are a bit of a tight fit and they have no
locating pins where they attach to their mounts. You may want to install the
mounts (parts G61 & G77) onto the cockpit floor before gluing on the drums to
make sure everything fits into place. The gunner seat is meant to swivel, but I
decided to glue my in place (photo 7).
You also have the option of having the radio operator’s seat up or
folded. The radio stack is made from plastic with well defined raised details.
Using very dark gray for the panels, I picked out the larger details with white
paint and finished it off with a rubbing onto all the edges from an artist
silver pencil (photo 8).
The sidewalls were
then painted with RLM 02, the same color that was applied to most of the cockpit
interior. The wiring was painted yellow and everything was given a wash of
heavily thinned artist black oil paint. After everything was dried overnight, I
added the PE seatbelts and joined the cockpit’s front and rear together along
with the right side wall (photo 9).
The rear gunner’s magazines were then added to the rear most area against the
back wall. These magazines are each molded individually with an additional small
PE piece. While the instruction initially shows 6 drums, only 5 really fit. If
you look at the drawings immediately after the magazine assembly, you will
realize only 5 are shown. However, be forewarned that after everything is closed
up, most of these magazines will be completely hidden. If you are of the school
where you only build what you can see, then you can safely leave off 3 magazines
from each side and no one will be the wiser. The PE strip for each magazine will
also be covered once finished.
At this point, I
decided the cockpit walls needed a bit more to make it look busy so I added some
Reheat placard decals. The upper right sidewall was painted, washed with oil,
and detailed with PE. With the addition of the cockpit lower right wall, the
cockpit was ready to be closed up (photos
10, 11).
The instruction
calls for attaching the front of the cockpit to the rear as one piece before
sandwiching the assembly with the fuselage.
First, be aware the front naturally attaches at a small slanting angle,
don’t think you have made a mistake.
Despite my doubt about its fit, the fuselage closed up nicely as per the
instructions. Note that the two panel inserts (parts B9 and B16) are provided
for the bottom gun bays. While not explicitly shown in the instructions, these
panels have an overlapping lip which dictates that they are glued at the same
time the fuselage is glued up. (photo
12). Do not assume you can attach them afterwards as I almost did. The rear
panel on my sample had a slight gap which was easily filled. But if you elect
later on to attach the optional belly bomb, this panel is completely hidden and
you need not worry about its appearance. The final step in the fuselage is the
rear insert which covers most of the rear gunner’s ammunition drums. A bit of
filler is needed here to make everything smooth
(photo 13). I’ve elected not to
follow the directions to install the rear machine gun at this time – as it will
be just begging to be broken later on.
The engine nacelles
were the next area to be built. Some of the parts look interchangeable, but they
are not. So either take them off as you need them or mark them clearly to make
sure you don’t glue the wrong pieces together. It is here that I had the most
trouble with the kit. The nacelles simply did not fit well onto the wings. There
is a slight step on the top, and a fairly large gap at the bottom rear
(photo 14, 15, 16). The
step is a bit annoying as you will lose some details when trying to send that
smooth. There is nothing here that cannot be fixed with filler and sanding, but
it comes as a bit of surprise after how well everything has been fitting so far.
The interior was again painted with RML 02 and washed with oil paint. There are
some very good details molded in. At first I thought about adding some wiring
details here but looking up some references realized that there just weren’t
many exposed wires on the real plane, so I left everything alone.
At this point I decided to deviate from the instructions and leave the
landing gear area alone until the major building and painting were done. Again
deviating from the instructions, I left the exhausts out until later on for
easier painting. One word of caution here is that the exhaust backing is a very
tight fit, after painting the paint layer will most likely prevent you from
fitting the exhausts into its slot. Since the exhaust is somewhat fragile at
this point, sand down the exhaust backing first to make sure you have enough
room later on.
Attaching the wings
themselves will show a somewhat poor fit. But before deciding on fillers to
solve the problem, careful examination will show that the locating tabs are a
bit long and the wing mating areas is not sufficiently flat. Some aggressive
sanding at the tab and the mating areas will improve the fit tremendously. A bit
of small filler was still needed in the bottom joint. With small gaps like
these, I like to use Squadron white filler followed immediately by repeated
wiping with a cotton swap that has been soaked with acetone based nail polish
remover (photo 17). This method has
the advantage of not losing any details due to sanding and much quicker than
multiple drying/sanding. The
ailerons are molded separately and needed a bit of sanding to fit. The separate
molding gives a great sense of depth but does make the wings more delicate to
handle as the ailerons are easily snapped off – I won’t tell you how many times
I forgot that piece of advice. The rear wing actually fitted very well and
almost snaps into place.
Next up is the nose
gun bay. As supplied it has enough details to display open as is. However, I
decided to add a few wires that are very evident in my reference photographs.
The interior was painted with RML 02, the guns were painted Gun Metal, and the
bottles were painted bright blue. Everything was given a black oil wash to pop
out the details (photo 18). Once
fitted, the nose can be mounted into the fuselage. The rear wall (part C10) of
the gun bay does cause the nose to bulge out a bit which required some sanding
to fix. If you decide to build yours with the gun bay closed up, I would advise
leaving the rear wall out entirely (photo
19, 20).
At this point, all
the major parts have been built. Everything else was either really small and
delicate parts or a part that would interfere with painting. So I deviated from
the instructions and taped up the cockpit area and lay down a coat of Tamiya
gray primer in preparation for painting
(photo 21). I realized that I had sanded the rear fuselage smooth to make
the two sides fit. However, the aircraft had a panel line there and needed to be
rescribed. After fixing a few joints
that were still visible I sprayed the underside with my own mixture of light
gray blue for the RML 76. I decided to finish the plane in “Wespen” markings of
Lt. Kutscha in Russia. As depicted in the instruction booklet, a winter white
wash was called for, but I decided to depict it in the Luftwaffe splinter camo
before the whitewash was applied. The colors called for are RLM 75 and RLM 74.
There is some debate as to the exact colors of the bf110 in Russia, as the
colors were often changed at the front, I bow to Eduard’s research and followed
their colors.
I first preshaded
some panel areas with a dark gray and then masked off the sides
(photo 22) with tape. I then sprayed a coat of RML 75 over the top
wings, making sure to leave streaks of unevenness going from the front to the
back. At this point I had already decided to make a dirty plane but not a worn
one – similar to your automobile left outside after a few snowstorms. So there
will be a minimum of fading or exposed metal. I then masked with more tape and
lay down the dark gray, again leaving unevenness in the paint. I like to weather
the plane as a whole instead of individual panels, as this gives a more
realistic look to my eyes. I then loaded some slightly darker RLM 75 and applied
the mottles to the sides.
At this point, I
realized that the yellow band around the fuselage needed to be painted and is
not supplied as a decal. So I masked that off and lay down a coat of paint
(photo 23), as yellow is notorious for bad coverage. If I had to do
this over again, I would have lay down the white paint before the splinter
grays. But luckily after the yellow was on, it did not require too thick a coat
before the grays were covered (photo 24).
The same yellow on white had to be done for the lower wing tips
(photo 25, 26).
Back to fitting the
landing gear. The parts are small and thin, so be careful taking them off the
tree. The landing strut simply butt joins into the nacelle and depends on the
thin supporting rods to stabilize it.
With my sometimes heavy handling of my models, I knew that this
arrangement would eventually break. I decided to drill a small locating whole
into the nacelle area (photo 27), and
a corresponding hole in the strut. I then inserted a small stiff wire into the
strut (photo 28) and attached the
assembly into the nacelle with CA glue
(photos 29, 30). This creates quite a strong bond and minimizes any chance
of breakage. The instruction
originally advises the builder to leave off the landing gear doors until the
nacelle is attached to the wing. I would advise leaving them off altogether
until the very end. These have very small attachment points and can easily be
snapped off.
Forging on, I
sprayed a coat of undiluted Future acrylic floor polish over the entire plane in
preparation for the decals
(photo 31). After letting the Future harden overnight, I put
down the decals across a couple of nights as there are a whole set of stencils
as well. I choose not to put every stencil down as these were often covered up
in the field (photo 32). To give it
that dirty wintry look, I added some white to my RLM 75 and thinned it at a
50/50 ratio. I then sprayed the aircraft in a somewhat random fashion, always
taking the wind effect into account. I sprayed very light coats over the decals
to tone them and blend them in with the rest of the plane. Next is a wash of
thinned black oil paint. I like to load up the wash in a small brush and let
capillary action carry the wash directly into each panel line
(photo 33). Excess is simply wiped off and I can always add more if
needed. While this takes a bit more time, I find it gives me better control over
the effect. I then use some dilute brown oil wash to highlight specific areas
that would have seen more wear such as the wing root areas
(photo 34). I used my airbrush to
paint a mixture of diluted Tamiya brown and smoke as exhaust stain to both the
top and bottom of the wing. Concentrating the spray more in the front, I then
quickly moved my brush back and away to create the fading effect
(photo 35).
The plane
is now over sprayed in somewhat random streaky fashion with a very thin layer of
light gray paint. This included spraying the decals to meld them into the rest
of the finish. The
underside was given the same treatment.The side
decals was also lightened, you can see how well the decals settled in here.
The main assembly
was now done and the small parts needed to be painted and attached. First up is
the canopy and as mentioned the supplied masking was a great labor saver
(photo 39, 40). There are some very, very small PE handles to be
attached, but looks wonderful if you make the effort. I then painted the bombs
by attaching them to a strip of masking tape. On the far left, if you look
closely you can see the bomb has white plastic strips on the bottom
(photo 41). This was one of the
repairs to very small parts to simply broke when I was not careful taking them
off. The rear machine gun was attached with its wonderful PE gun sight
(photo 42). My mistake here was in
attaching the canopy first before the rear gun, which made this a much more
difficult exercise than it should have been. The final step was the antenna post
and antenna made from fishing line. I first colored the line with a sliver
marker and then drilled a very small hole in the rear stabilizer. After
anchoring the line with CA glue in the hole I tied and fixed the line onto the
post, snipping off the excess with small scissors
(photo 43). I attached another antenna from the main line through a
hole into the body of the plane that I had previously drilled. I then used small
drops of CA glue to build up insulators at both ends of the antenna.
Finally, it was
time to step back and admire my handiwork. The kit went together wonderfully,
while the small parts and ill fitting engine nacelles required some work. It was
easily overcome with some patience and care. Overall, it was a wonderful kit to
build and I would recommend it to any intermediate level modeler.
