Fieseler Fi156c
Tamiya 100th milestone 1/48 Aircraft kit. Nicely packaged along with the kit to put it inflight with extended landing gear, the rod, and a plastic base. I’ve replaced mine with a beefier wooden base. Comes with a seated and standing Rommel figure along with a pilot.
The kit build starts with the engine, and a nice engine it is, just needed some extra plumbing to give it that busy look. I added these using solder and lead wire. If you were going to build it all button up, you obviously just need to do the basics, as its all hidden except for part of the exhaust.
The interior of the aircraft is detailed with Eduard PE kit – honestly, not sure it was worth it once everything is closed up. One interesting thing with the kit is that the clear part is molded along with the fuselage, first time I’ve seen that in a kit. You can also see the canopy masks provided by Tamiya with the kit, you do have cut them out as they are not perforated like Eduards masks are. It’s a great compromise to keep the costs down and takes very little effort to cut them.
The pilot was painted up, not one of my best and not one of Tamiya’s best, not sure why his hands are sitting on his lap. However, I wasn’t up to trying find another figure or modifying this one.
You can then close up the fuselage, note the hefty metal spar for supporting the wing, very well done. The metal support for the landing wheels came with the optional ‘flying configuration’ details up kit, as the wheels extend down due to gravity when in flight. Again, nice a sturdy. You can also see the nice details in the firewall, just added some plumbing.
Everything else just fits, no putty and no drama. The paint job was done with Tamiya acrylics, and the squiggles were brush painted.
Time to paint up Rommel – I used vallejo for the figure and Eduard PE patches for the lapel, good stuff. Then along with existing Kubelwagen that was built previously, mounted everything onto the base and the support rod in the Tamiya inflight detail up kit. The plague was just a print out on glossy photopaper with plastic sheet backing. The design was done in photoshop.