Henschel Hs 123 B-1 Josef Menapace

Steffen Arndt
just a few pictures of an older project. Hope to get some decals which have the correct size for the "Rolf v. Zahradnicek" inscription with Gaspatch being too small while Italeri way oversized. Gaspatch also has the <| wrong in size and distance. I had to strip the model side once to repair it. Gaspatch showed a great customer service to send me a spare decal set with which I can cut & paste my own interpretation of the widely known pictures (I also made the yellow fuselage band wider as shown in Kagero Monograph 48 Hs 123 page 39 (upper pic). To my eye the Schlachtfliegerdreieck is (almost) fully inside the band.

Steffen Arndt
I was still not able to find proper decals. Last week I bought Peddinghaus decals set for this plane. Ernst has a very nicely colored Mickey mouse badge included but sadly his inscription is much thinner than the picture so I took the Gaspatch writing even though it is not high enough. The <| was corrected too (shortened bar, slightly reduced angle, smaller distance between bar and chevron). I like the bar to be green, Peddinghaus has it included in yellow. I need a larger Balkenkreuz as the 2cm crosses included in the kits and decal sets are too small when compared with the picture.

Steffen Arndt
Some progress, not much but I want to show it anyway. I was not satisfied with the fuselage cross and sanded id down to the plastic. A new layer of paint was sprayed easily on.

During handling I broke one of the struts and decided I better glue on the upper wing to avoid further damage and lost parts. I had painted it some year ago and when it was on I found out the clear coat had cracked on the upper side. These were large deep cracks that I could not get fixed with sanding and thinner. So I stripped the whole upper side of that wing and resprayed it RLM 71.

I found slightly larger crosses in an Xtradecal set for the Do215. These look much better, but I need to retouch the paint job to match the photos of the real thing. The Xtra decals as the spare wing crosses went on without problems.

As you might guess I used a fair amount of masking tape over the past weeks.