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First Jets

Wings to fuselage assembly

Once the two fuselages are glued in place, It's time to go for the wing assembly. The He178 has it’s wings on the top of the fuselage and the Pioneer on the bottom. So Condor designed the wings with one upper part and two under parts while Special Hobby designed the wings as one upper part and one under part. The wings of the Heinkel are easy to put in place. You just have to glue the upper part on the fuselage and the two under parts next. The wings will be slightly offset at the tips (picture 8) but it isn't a big deal to handle this with a little sanding. You will only have to use a minimum of putty where the wings are meeting the back of the fuselage.

The Pioneer wings are more challenging. Gluing the two wing parts together is very easy... but fitting them properly to the fuselage is another story. The problem was that the fuselage probably warped a little while I glued the cockpit/gear bay assembly in place. The result is that you will have to use a lot of putty to achieve a smooth transition under the fuselage (picture 9).

The planes where sanded to eliminate any imperfection and they where ready for the paint job.! At that time, the Pioneer kit was overtaken by the He 178 one.

Painting

First I sprayed a coat of medium grey on both planes to reveal the imperfections (picture 10). Then I put the He 178 aside and started with the painting of the typical yellow underside of British prototypes. The colours used were brown for pre-shading, yellow+white for the base and finally Yellow+red for the final coat (picture 11). The last paint was diluted and almost translucent not to waste the previous work. Once the underside was dry, I draw the camouflage pattern on the plane and sprayed the brown first and then the green using Blu-Tack to delineate the two colours (picture 12). The result is very convincing in 1/48 scale and trouble free too. The perfect technique when your hands are shaking or if you don't have a double action airbrush.

Then it was the Heinkel's turn, so I replaced the Pioneer with it on my paint area. The kit received a coat of RLM02 (Tamiya XF22) and, after some preparation with Tamiya masking tape, I sprayed coats of Testor Metalizer on the panels that were supposed to be bare aluminium on the real aircraft (picture 13).

Both kits were "Futured" with Klear (Klir in France) and they were set aside to dry. During all the painting process, I also built and painted all the small parts such as undercarriage, gear doors canopies etc. so all was ready for the final stage.