Dragon have announced the return of the classic ex-TriMaster Me 262 in its experimental bomber-destroyer guise.

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You wait for a bus for ages, then they all come together, so Dragon is bring this one out, just as Hobby boss release their's!

I've built one of the TriMaster Me-262 kits and it's a tough build but looks great when done. I didn't like the rubber tires but they have held up well for the last 20 yrs. Tough fit around the engine to wing connection but it can be cleaned up with careful scraping and sanding.

Whenever I get around to doing another one I'll probably purchase some resin wheels, IMO that's about all it needs.

One or more things I feel should be pointed out:

Do not consider the Dragon-origin kit to be equal in accuracy to the Tamiya kit: In plan view: The angle of the inboard wing trailing edge is completely different and wrong, being closer to 90° to the fuselage rather than the more steeply swept forward angle as it should be.

Therefore the plan view is wrong. There may be Dragon or Tamiya fuselage lenght issues as well (Tamiya's nose supposedly too pointy?), but I don't know about those.

The Tamiya kit has other issues that might (likely?) make it inferior to the new Hobby Boss kit: A big one to me is the thickness of the wings and the trailing edges, which are both far superior, in depicted thinness, on the Dragon's one-piece wing...

One primary feature of the Me-262 was its incredibly thin wings: Tamiya simply does not do them justice...

If the HB kit is better there, it is then definitely superior to the Tamiya kit, which I refused to finish building in part because of the wing thickness issue, especially the grossly thick trailing edges, which cannot really be cured without exterior detail damage because the trailing edges themselves are one-piece...

Apparently the Tamiya mobile canopy portion is not bulged enough in profile, and Hobby Boss did this better. (To be verified)

Note that the gun parts on the Dragon's 50 mm gun are said to be better than HB's, so those with deep pockets could cross-kit these two...

Ignore the forum complaints about the HB rivets: They are not that bad, and the real-life puttying of the panel lines was one single coat application that shrank and revealed 60-80% of the panel lines almost as if they were unputtied (just slightly less obvious).

To me the HB kit looks like it could be a winner overall, but the closed leading slats are a rotten shame, as pictures of operational 262s never show them closed on the ground, even with camo nets hanging off them...

Gaston