Following up on my in-box review of the AML 1/72 Heinkel He-45, here is what I have managed to accomplish so far:









Once the fuselage is closed up, the beautiful instrument panel provided with the kit is nowhere to be found. Such is life...

Despite this, the alignment tabs on the fuselage managed to get in the way of the invisible instrument panel. If this had not been removed, I would have been forced to place the instrument panel so far forward that it would have gotten in the way of the control stick.



The fit of the cockpit floors, both front and rear, was also horrible, and had to be laboriously trimmed down, as did the front radiator grille. Even worse, each corner of the upper decking of the gunner's seat had to be trimmed off and filed down, just so it would sit down flush with the fuselage. Why AML didn't think to mold these notches in the first place baffles me. The instructions only provide a tiny drawing with no arrows or text to show where the notches need to be.

Still, the fuselage is almost completely closed up, and then I can go on to the relatively easy task of getting the wings and fins to properly mate to the fuselage.

I am saving the gun ring and photoetch for the finishing touches, as with all the manhandling I will likely have to do I don't want to risk breaking any delicate stuff...

On a positive note, I CAN see the nice photoetched seatbelts provided with the kit, which made my whole day.

Hi Michael!

Very nice progress! Looks good so far...

Did you lost the instrument panel or do you mean it won't be visible once the fuselage halves have been glued together? Sorry to ask but you must know I'm French...

Anyway, I'm looking forward to see more and especially the nice camouflage!

Jean-Luc

My sentence about the instrument panel was too vague and poorly worded, now that I think about it. I meant to say that it is there, but cannot be seen at all without a flashlight.

I am also looking forward to the lozenge style camouflage seen on the back of the box. Not too sure what the best way of doing it will be though. I have some ideas though.

In retrospect, now that I am building it there are several other problems with the kit, such as the poor fit in places and lack of certain details in the instructions. I have also never needed so many clamps in my life for merely joining the fuselage halves together.

Still, I am hopeful that this project will have a happy outcome.

Hi again Michael!

Welcome in the wonderful world of Short Run kits!



A little game for you: amongst the pictures above is one of a mainstream kit (all the others are Short Run), which one is it?

Jean-Luc

Hmm, tough one. I guess it is the bottom left photo.

Bingo! You are right, it's the wing of a Dragon 1/32 scale P-51 D kit. Now can you tell me what the other kits are?

Jean-Luc

Top left: Polkarpov I-153
Top center: Uh...

Maybe I should just get back to building...

Hi Michael!

From left to right and top to bottom: Classic Airframes I-153, Fonderie Miniature Hs-126, Azur Potez 630, Czech Model Me 309, Signifer Grumman Goose, Dragon P-51 D and again Fonderie Miniature Hs-126...

Jean-Luc

Well, I got some more work on the He-45 today. The lower wings and tail feathers are now attached and I have done some major filling of the joints with Mr Surfacer 1200, as 500 was not available to me. It took a while but it is just about ready for priming. My only concern is that the masking tape may damage the paint job on the instrument panel, as the paint doesn't bond well to the metal from what I can tell. Maybe some future soaked paper with liquid mask holding it at the corners will work...



Here you can actually see the cockpit because I have flash turned on:





I had managed to destroy most of the panel line detail on the top of the plane while sanding down the seams. This is my first attempt at rescribing and I think I did a decent job. The use of Dymo tape really helped out.

Edit: Oops, I uploaded the wrong photos. I will have the right ones up in a minute.

While painting my Nardi trainer silver, I decided to go ahead and paint the metal parts of the fuselage silver as well to try out Jean-Luc's liquid mask paint chipping trick.



Job hunting will take up much of the free time I use for modeling, but I will try and get some more done over this weekend. I have a lot of masking ahead...

I did some more work on the He-45 tonight. there are no locater pins and holes for the struts, just some small scratches for the outer wing struts and center struts. There were no scratches to mark out the location for the center struts at all on the fuselage. To remedy this, I got out the wire cutters, some .020 brass rod, and my pin vise and proceeded to carefully drill holes in the ends of the struts and placed brass rod in them. The beauty of this is that brass rod is somewhat stronger than plastic, which means that when I attached the upper wings I didn't even need glue to hold them in place!

Here is one outer strut, almost complete:


Here is the model with the upper wing attached. It fits almost perfectly!



BTW, I found a rather serious error while looking at the attachment points for the upper wing. On the starboard side the locater mark is too far inboard on the wing by about 10mm. Very careless error on the part of the manufacturer. It was simple to fix, but come on, don't these guys even build one of their models before shipping it off for sale?

Hi Michael!

This is what I also think everytime I build a short run model! Some people even think that the various parts of such kits (plastic, resin, photo etched, vacuform...) are designed by separate design teams and that's why the fit is sometimes terrible...

Anyway, you made good progress! I'm sure this one will look spectacular once finished!

Jean-Luc

I did some test fitting of the central struts and it appears they are too short. They looked a bit chunky anyways so I have begun assembling new ones using brass rod. While I am working on them I went ahead and dotted the metal sections around the panel lines with spots of liquid mask. Since this is my first time trying this technique I don't know how well it will turn out.

After masking off the radiator I sprayed Humbrol 65 (Aircraft Blue) on the undersides today. Tomorrow I will mask them off and paint the first topcoat of light grey, and then the real fun begins if first masking off the parts that stay gray and painting the green, and then masking the parts that stay green and painting the dark brown.

I have finally done all the painting of the camo scheme. I know I will have to do touch up in a few spots but not too much. I need to work on my chipping technique though, as the chips are a bit too round and overdone. Towards the end it got really hard to get the motivation to finish the job, but the worst should be over now.









All I need to do now is let the brown paint dry, and then put some white on the wing tips. Then I can touch up and start adding decals. In the mean time I really should finish working on those center struts.

Not too much progress to report on. I forgot to paint white on the rudder so I went and finished that, and applied the fuselage decals. I will save the wing decals for when the top wing has been attached and the rigging is done. One problem with this kits decals is that the black cross on the rudder is simply too small. I looked at the white crosses for the upper wing and I think they will be too small too, as they match the camber of the wing but do not take into account the curvature of the upper surface.



Here it is after touch up:



Tomorrow I will give the plane a wash and then let it dry for a few days before applying the final flat coat on everything but the side of the wings that haven't gotten their decals yet.

I have neglected getting the rest of this done for nearly three weeks or so, but now I am back. A few days ago I finally got around to putting on my own homemade flat coat using Future, Tamiya Matt Base, and some rubbing alcohol as a thinner. It turned out ok, though I think the flat coat is still somewhat shinny still. Next time I will use more matt base.

Today, I decided I was going to get the rest of the fine details finished on the fuselage and FINALLY get that upper wing on. I have attached all the struts except for the front ones for the center struts. I scratched those but decided to make the front one as a separate piece, since I couldn't get as sharp a bend with the tools I have as I would have liked.

I did some test fitting on the exhausts and landing gear, and the fit isn't good at all. The landing gear was particularly irritating because the mating surface on the front struts are formed at the wrong angle, and have alignment pins that will be completely useless anyways because I have to trim them off to get something close to a decent fit.

To top things off, I almost lost my sanity when I lost the barrel for the nose mounted machine gun. I had to make a new one from scratch, and guess the dimensions since I didn't have the original part to compare to. I think I did a good job, and only an expert with a magnifying glass will notice anyways.











As usual, any comments and suggestions are welcome.

Excellent job that camo scheme is really interesting, must have been really satisfying when it was done.

Steve

Thanks. The camo took a lot of work, but it turned out well. My only issue is that I messed up the paint chip effect. The chips are way too large and shaped wrong.

I am almost done, but I have a question for anyone who may know the answer. I am working on assembling the rear gun emplacement and everything is going fine except for one part which I don't quite know where it goes. Here is the picture:



The photo etch seatbelt, PP7, doesn't seem right to me. I was wondering if anyone might have a better idea of where to place the thing.

Ugh... Well, everything is done except for one small area that I need to fix and one little disaster that can't be helped.

The bracing struts for the tail skid aren't even included in the kit, so I scratched them. The thingie that dangles off the starboard side below the rear gunner was too chunky and had a weird growth on it so I scratched that. Yesterday I had to hold the exhausts to a candle flame to melt it into a better shape because the forward curve was extending into the path of the propeller...

I will leave the awful details for the review, all I have left is one spot on the grille that got messed up and had to be repainted. (Forgot to future it...) I talked with Jean-Luc and he agreed that the placement for the seatbelt that is shown in the instructions is highly suspect. I tried to glue it on the rear seat cushion only to lose the darn thing in the fuselage. Oh well, the rear gunner in real life was too macho for seatbelts anyways.

Here are some pictures of what I have. One of these days I must get a better camera...

Nice color scheme! Love it!

Andy

Hi Michael!

I turned out great! Congratulations!

Jean-Luc

More photos:











I am also going to submit this into the Model of the Month contest. Competition is going to be fierce!

Hey Michael
I think that looks really good. i like the paintjob well done