¹⁄35

Ta183 Bat Plane!

Radar!

The radar antennae were robbed..uh..re-appropriated from a Tamiya Heinkel He-219 kit. Heating a screwdriver and plunging the hot tip into the plastic made the holes in the wings for the antenna arms. These were added with CA glue. A small fairing was made from Evergreen scrap plastic and mounted under the tail of the aircraft, forward of the metal exhaust cone. The rear facing radar antenna was attached to this fairing. The lower protrusions of the antenna were painted with alternating white and red warning stripes.

The missiles were assembled with a strip of half round Evergreen used to hide a gap between the two halves of the missile body. I’m lazy, forgive me. The nose was painted red, the body aluminum and the wings tan. The kit comes with one drop tank, but I stole another tank from a second TA-183 kit I have, I must have been a thief in a former life. One tank was painted RLM 76 Light Blue and the other with Metalizer Titanium. Don’t ask me why I did it, I don’t know either.

I dirtied up the model further with a few paint chips using Metalizer Titanium, a silver pencil and pastel powder for the gun stains. I spotted fresh black paint on at several areas to represent repairs to the paint job. More black pastel was added to the exhaust area to give it that burned look. .And I … oh wait that’s it. Alles Kaput.
 

Where’s Shiina?

This kit was a lot of fun to build. The all black paint job was easy to do, especially since I didn’t have to break out the ol’ airbrush to do it. The second Ta-183 will be turned into a 2-seater……someday……Where’s Shiina?

Copyright ©2002 - Text and Photos by Val Bueno. All Rights Reserved.