Heinkel He 100V-8 - 1939 - 1/72

I’ve had this sitting in my stash for at least ten years… time to get cracking. Starting with the cockpit. 

This will be a mostly out of the box build. I added side consoles made from sprue to the cockpit walls and adorned them with some left over instrument panel decals from the spares bin. 

Cockpit done and ready to be closed up. 

Closed up, I’m impressed by the fit of this short run kit. Some filing of the wing roots and some light putty work on the underside seams is all that’s been required so far. 

Tail planes on… 

So far, the worst part of construction is the canopy. The whole thing is too long and the shape at the front is wrong. Quite a bit of cutting filing sanding to both the fuselage and canopy to get them close. 

I mixed up some Vallejo putty with RLM02 paint to fill the gaps at the front lower corners of the canopy. I also whittled down the rear to blend into the fuselage spine. 

Don’t worry about the sanding scratches on the rear part of the canopy, on this particular aircraft it was an aluminum panel, not clear. 

Finished with the preliminary build. Now for bodywork and finish prep… 

A little putty, sanding, and primer and this little guy is ready for its bare metal finish… 

A bit more putty around the wing roots and cockpit and starting to mask the canopy 

Masking completed and getting the model prepped for a coat of primer to see where further work is needed 

A couple coats of Mr Surfacer with a little remedial putty and sanding in between 

For the first time, I’m gonna give the AK Extreme Metal paints a try. If it goes horribly wrong, I can always change my mind from the bare metal finish that the aircraft wore during its record run, and do the overall RLM02 scheme that it wore afterwards. 

After a coat of their black base, here’s the first coat of AK Extreme Metal “Aluminum”. Seems a bit pebbly, but I’ll let it dry overnight before buffing. Then I’ll pick out some panels with a few other colors from the metal range and the cloth control surfaces with silver paint. 

Excerpt from "Messerschmitt Me 209v1 Schiffer Military History - Planes of the Third Reich Series", by David Myhra 

Bare metal finish attempt number two… after leaving the AK Extreme Metal to dry for a full 24 hours I came back to the bench and found that the “bit pebbly” had turned to full on orange peel. So our came the sanding sticks, down to 3200 grit and then buffed with a cotton rag… 

And a second coat of “aluminum”. We’ll see how this goes… 

A few panels picked out with “White Aluminum” and “Duraluminum” 

And a few other panels in RLM02. Unfortunately there are a few areas where the masking lifted the metal finish, so there’s a bit of sanding, buffing, and refinishing in my future… 

Finished painting panels and pulled off the canopy masks 

Started “puttying” the applicable seams. The color is a complete guess with a nod to artistic license. It’s a mixture of RLM02 with a bid of red. It’ll take a few coats to built up to what I have in my head. 

Decals applied and the whole model was shot with a gloss clear. Oddly, the clear (Mr Clear) reacted with the AK Xtreme Metal and the metal portions of the plane all became “pixelated” 

After lot of burnishing with everything I had in my arsenal, the finish is back to something more normal looking. 

Finished…made a lot of errors on this one, but learned a lot more and in the end it’s a presentable little kit.