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Mistel 5 Heinkel He 162A-2 plus Arado E-377a by Anthony Manzoli
Dragon has done a nice job reproducing this combination in 1/72 scale. Kit number 5002 features 83 flash free light grey styrene parts. It also includes10 photo etched pieces and 4 tinted clear pieces. The kit can be constructed with the He 162A-2 mounted atop of the the ARADO E-377a which, in turn, sits on a 5 wheeled tow cart. Alternatively, you may build the He 162A-2 with it's landing gear down. The kit comes with two instruction sheets. Construction is called out over a total of 23 stages. The colours that will be needed for the kit are white, black, red, yellow, silver, flat black, field gray, red brown, RLM 71 Dark Green, RLM 02 Gray, burnt iron, khaki green, olive drab, dark green, and light blue.
Arado E-377 I chose to start construction of the ARADO E-377 first.
Construction is pretty straight forward, and filler was hardly required. The kit looks quite nice when completed, and will be a great conversation kit. The next six steps are for the dolly.
Take special care with the smaller parts because they are molded close to the sprue and can easily be broken. I actually ended up breaking the pull handle while trying to cut it from the sprue, but it was easy enough to scratch build one from steel wire.
Heinkel He 162A-2 The Heinkel He 162 kit offers some minor detailing but nothing significant. The He 162A-2 may be built with the engine compartment open to show off the nicely detailed BMW003E-1, which has a few pieces of photo etching to add to it. I tend to favor 1:48 kits because of the extra detailing involved. 1:72 tends to lose the details that only larger scales can provide.
The kit's photo etching adds detail to the Salamander, as well as the landing gear and bays. Unfortunately I planned on building my Mistel 5 as one unit, so the landing gear was retracted and invisible.
The kit required filler at the wing joints, the front and rear landing gear doors and the top and bottom of the fuselage seems.
The directions call for RLM 76 undersurface with RLM 83 and 81 upper fuselage and wings. I used Gunze acrylics which carry a large selection of Luftwaffe colors. I find the RLM 81 is a bit too green for Brown Violet, it is more like an olive drab.
I did follow the directions and painted one wing and the engine cowlings RLM 81 though it is hardly distinguishable. After the paint had dried I used a sharp pencil to accent all of the panel lines. I carefully dipped the canopy in Shine Magic. If you have not yet tried this, I highly recommend doing it. The canopy will turn out so clear that it really sets off a nicely finished model. The cockpit is detailed enough to want to leave he canopy propped open.
The final steps are the painting the wheels of the trailer, decaling and gluing everything together. The kit offers decals for one plane, and after a coat of the Shine Magic I applied the decals and then followed with a second coating with the Shine Magic.
The final step was to add some small paint chips with silver pencil and spraying a matt coat of a mixture of Tamiya Flat base and the Shine Magic.
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Text and Images Copyright © 2001 by Anthony Manzoli
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