Messerschmitt Bf 109E-3

by Mark Hessler
 

 Hasegawa's 1/48 scale Messerschmitt Bf 109E-1 is available online from Squadron.com

This is my Hasegawa 1/48 scale Messerschmitt Bf 109E-3 built straight from the box. It depicts an aircraft of the II./JG54, stationed in France in autumn 1940.

Due to the fact that this is only my second seriously built model since I was 12 years (when I was a little boy I did some models, too, don’t ask how they looked like…) I am very satisfied with the result, even if there are some minor things I will do better next time.

The model nearly fell together on its own.

On the downside a little putty was necessary, but it could have been my fault during assembly.

The antenna is an aluminium and black painted nylon-thread with two drops of plastic-glue that were formed in the right shape manually after drying a few minutes. The gun-barrels were drilled out with an injection needle (ouch!), braking-cables an the canopy-ribbon were made out of thin wire. The backrest on the seat is made out of a little piece of Kleenex that were painted leather-like with watercolours and sealed with flat clear colour.

I decided to paint the model in the typical mottled Luftwaffe-scheme to improve my airbrush-skills (second model I used one at all). All colours were from Testors.

I started with pre-shading the panel-lines in black an sprayed the complete scheme freehand after doing some meditations to calm down ;-). Thereafter I used lighter variations of the colours to get a bleaching-effect on the upper wings. Exhaust stain was also applied with the airbrush. Afterwards I weathered the model with watercolours, applied with a brush or Q-tip (behind the wing mounted guns for example). “Chipping” was done with aluminium colour and a thin brush. The cockpit and wheels were drybrushed with silver colour.

It wouldn’t look the way it does without the information and motivation I got from Hyperscale!

Best regards from Wolfenbuettel in Germany.


 

Click on the thumbnails below to view larger images:

Model, Images and Text Copyright © 2002 by Mark Hessler
Page Created 26 June, 2002
Last Updated 04 June, 2007

Back to HyperScale Main Page

Back to Features Index