Building the Roden(t) He111E (or other early models)

[Mark M.]

This is a general reference guide. I promised I'd type up my thoughts on the build to somebody, and when I took recent progress pics I found the original thread had lost all its images.

I'm starting anew.

If you're unfamiliar with the kit, here is a preview I submitted many years back (hard to believe that was in 2004!)

http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/Rev1...ller/rev503.htm

For some references, you may like this link:

http://109lair.hobbyvista.com/111/lounge111.htm

It is a long-extinct group build, but the web page has many useful references. They were quite interesting for me. I used them to do a small amount of scratch building.

So, most folks know this kit has a very bad rep. Terrible fit, terrible parts, a giant gap on the fuselage (more on that later). I started the kit without committing to the assembly of the fuselage, so I did a lot of dry fitting, testing, playing, and plastic shaping. Turns out by the time I'd glued it I found I could bypass a LOT of the problems with the fuselage fit, and that was 60% of the problem right there.

I worked on the engines and wings first and then as I was playing with the fuselage subassemblies I put that together.

Since your attention spans are no doubt drying up already, I'll go right to the heart of the matter:

Taming the fuselage gap

To steal a quote from the Matrix, 'There is no gap.'

There is enough plastic to meet around the bulkheads, and join. The problem is the way the plastic is shaped in the molds the sides spring out and the plastic bends at the wrong part of a curve [see diagram "A"]. If you push the bulkhead up as you might think it should go, you only make the problem worse [see diagram "B"]. If you force the gap, then you fill the gap, you are creating possible problems with the forward nose later, and the joint with the bomb bay doors.

I will be honest, I had to shave a bit off the bulkheads, and sand down the pointed corners of the bomb racks, but I put them in to keep the internal structure where it should be, and because you can see it through the windows and the cockpit doorway. Feel free to sand down the pointy part of the bomb racks, but leave the rest in place. It worked for me [see diagram "D"].

I glued the sides together and the interior in the same step, and used my hands to press the soft plastic together until such time as it would hold with tightly wound rubber bands. The plastic meets in the middle when done properly [see diagram "C"]. Don't press TOO HARD! The bulkheads themselves are also of soft plastic, and I almost snapped the rear one in half pushing inward too hard. Note the bomb racks help here, forcing the plastic to conform rather than spring away.

You will have to shave down inside the upper part of the cockpit walls (where they meet at the top) to fit the bulkhead below it:

I discovered immediately that the fuselage could be forced into place, and realized it would be a real pain to attach the cockpit afterwards, so I cemented the left and right portions of the fuselage to their cockpit pieces first then proceeded with the interior.

Let me drive home this idea of forcing the fuselage to join rather than filling it: Many people complained about the fuselage and the canopy not fitting, of the clear nose parts and the fuselage not fitting, of many things not fitting. By taking the steps I did, I had almost none of these problems.

When done, it looked like this:

Here you see tight rubber bands holding the fuselage closed. Note the interior bomb bay actually helps to brace and mold the fuselage walls -- another reason to build it rather than tossing it out:

Note there is a gap underneath the nose section? Leave that. Don't force that one. You will find out later why this is important.

I made some minor shelves and frames/braces from bent wire and plastic card, to fill in some interior detail.

The one key thing about this build is that you have to know what and when to glue and what and when not to. For example we're gluing the interior and the top of the fuselage, but not the bomb bay doors yet, and not the gap under the nose.

It's past midnight and I need to get up. I will add another installation tomorrow.

[WymanV]

Oh noooooooo....

Ken <--finished his for that group build...last year...

[Steve N]

Great info..keep it coming!

I'll have to print all of this out, and put it in the box with the kit...so if poor sod gets who it after I'm dead has the guts to attempt to build it he'll have half a chance..

SN

[thom]

Good to see someone having the kahonas to build a tough kit rather than just telling us all about its 'issues' (see my sig).

Thanks for the reference, too.

[dixieflyer]

Mark,

Thanks for posting this. I always thought that this model of the He-111 was a cool a/c from the 30's, but the Roden kit and all its issues kept me from ever buying it. Now, maybe, I might have the guts to go out and buy one.

Warren

[crazydon]

Oh noooooooo....

Ken <--finished his for that group build...last year...

Easy now, I know those flashbacks can be rough

[The Mikester]

I hear this is the method some people use to get this kit together...

[Mark M.]

The bomb bay and the nose gap

We left off here:

Now you've got a fuselage. Well, almost. You're missing a large chunk unerneath.

Here is why we didn't close the gap under the nose:

First, there is a bulkhead forward of the cockpit that fits into the narrow nose. This is the perfect guide for the width required. It doesn't quite match up on the inner curve of the nose walls, but the total width is right. Do what you can. Close the upper gap, it is the easier one to deal with. Also, by having the plastic meet up naturally on the upper surfaces, the clear cockpit canopy will fit almost perfectly.

Dry fitting the bomb bay you will see it wants to spring out. Part of this is optical illusion, part of it is a fit issue. The gap under the nose will make sure the left and right sides fit flush with the bomb bay leading edge wing root. This is a large peice and VERY strong. Use it to help strengthen the fuselage.

Glue the forward portion, clamp or rubber band it firmly and wait for the glue to fully cure (I waited a couple of days for good measure using Testors cement). Then move aft and secure the rear portion. I had to do a small amount of sanding on the rear joint seam, but nothing major. Mostly where the trailing edge of the wing root was split top/bottom the bomb bay piece was to large and I had to sand it down to match the fuselage. You'll note that both the inner bulkhead and the bomb bay seem to have the same dimensions. If you tape the top and bottom clear nose pieces together and dry fit them you will find they are almost a perfect match for the nose now. The gap happens to conform to the right shape for me, but double check on your parts. I taped my clear parts together and stood them on a sheet of plastic card, drew a lind around the base and cut it out. I used this blank as an easy-to-hold reference for my nose gap and dry fitting.

The end result is almost perfect, fit-wise.

Note that during my dry fitting I ended up sanding/filing some of the bottom of the bulkheads, where they sit in the bomb bay area, but I don't really know if this was required now that I reflect on it.

One rule on this model I found to be true: Dry fit 20 times, assemble 1 time. I did this because I was tinkering before building it, but it really helped. And, when I failed to do this I ran into problems (you'll read about that later).

[EDIT: as a foot-note, I had plastic card at juuuuust about the right thickness to fill in the gap. I cut a thin strip of this, fit it inside the gap so that it was flush from the interior, cemented it FIRMLY into place, and cleaned up the outside with iron file, xacto blade scraping, and wet sanding. Just an FYI for how I closed this gap up.]

Up next: The engines and the wings.

Edited June 26, 2008 by Mark M.

[Mark M.]

I need to upload a couple of pics I forgot regarding the wings and engines, so that will have to wait until tonight (I'm at work now). I have to upload them from my home PC, can't do it here.

[Mark M.]

The engines, the wings, and the gear wells (aka the good the bad and the ugly)

The Engines:

The engines fit into the wing roots, but I built them as subassemblies first. These were in fact the first parts I really started working on.

You can see from this review shot the breakdown of parts:

You see that the rear part of the engine is a left and right pair that fits with the wing root and blends into the wing. On the front of this you glue 3 pieces that are divided much like a capital letter "Y" when looking from the front. A Left, a Right, and a Top.

You can't simply stick them on. Dry fit either the left or right, and match its position to the curves and shapes of the rear parts. Then look for the left/right seam of the rear 2 pieces, and use a pencil to mark this on the front part. Mine had well over a 16th of an inch of overlap. Now do the same for the other side, and you'll notice the same problem.

For example look at this finished assembly:

The red and blue were about the extent of the sides, and they had to meet in the middle. Without some plastic removal, they wouldn't have fit onto the base. The yellow line is where the seam is after I put some work into it. Note on the right half of the image that there is too much plastic, but that removing it won't ruin the shape of the cowling nor leave a major seam/dimple. I think I've added some grey primer at this point and you can barely see a seam.

The top piece then simply needs to be trimmed/sanded until it literally falls into place like the keystone of an arch. There is a front piece on this engine assembly. You must trap the propellor shaft retainer behind this piece, but I did not want to put the prop on until the last possible moment. There is a problem though. The round front piece (with holes around it, visible in the review picture) is too large. Perhaps it was taking into calculation the excess plastic on the parts it attaches to.

I glued it in place with Elmer's (white) glue, made sure it was firmly secure, and sanded/filed/grinded the rim down until there was a minimal step between it and the engine cowling behind it. This would be hard to do if you put the spinner on too soon.

The wings:

The wings look nice but the first thing you will notice upon dry-fitting them is that the upper wing is way way too large. The trailing edge of the wing is on the lower piece, and the upper portion attaches at the flaps hinge panel line. Placing it on the bottom half yields a part that extends about 3/16ths beyond the lower part at the front edge and the wingtip. Further examination shows that the rear of the upper piece is also extremely thick and produced a large step between it and the flaps (attached to the lower wing).

I don't have pictures of this because this was well over a year ago and I didn't take them at the time.

The first thing to do is deal with the thickness of the trailing edge of the upper surface. Grind/sand/scrape/shave down the thickness until it sits almost flush with the flaps (it will sit on a shelf so once you have the proper thickness it will figure itself out). Then glue the wing together. Don't glue the leading edge inboard of the engine bay.

I have a few different types of exacto blades for my hobby knife. I put in a flat and wide "chisel" blade and carefully scored the soft plastic. I used the lower wing leading edge as the baseline, and simply cut into the excess plastic of the upper wing along the curve of the lower piece. The plastic is soft enough that I only had to start a cut a few times before removing the plastic. Repeat for each wing. This will leave a large flat front upper leading edge. I used sanding sponges, very coars sandpaper (in larger pieces) and took wide strokes with the hand to best rebuil the curve of the wing. The end result is quite nice but devoid of panel lines and rivets. Don't forget to round the wingtips in the same manner. Don't sand/scrape past the straight panel line that leads from the engine to the wingtip. Then simply match the panel lines from the other side of this when you re-scribe the missing ones (if you choose to).

The panel lines are so faint a layer of paint will bury them. I took some time and re-scored them all using an xacto blade and using dymo tape to keep straight lines. The finished paintjob shows these, but would not if I hadn't done it. Forget any rivet detail surviving a coat of paint.

The Gear Wells:

You build a box and slide it into the opening on the leading edge of the wing. Not as easy as it sounds. If you look closely in the instructions it may say to cut off a wedge on the side gear walls to make them 1mm shorter. Do yourself a favor and make this 2mm or even 3mm. I did not notice this. After I had assembled the wing halves I tried to slip this into the wing and it would not fit. I went so far as to carve out the inside of the upper wing until it was paper thin and you could see light through it, and shaved off the insides of the buttom half, but the parts would not fit. They were too tall, and would break the seams if forced. They also prevented the gluing of the upper/lower wing between the engine bay and the wing root. So I took it out and broke the parts down (much as I hated to) and cut about 1mm off all the side walls and glued them again. Even with all my efforts to shave the interior of the wing it was still a tight fight. I took off almost 2 on the second gear well and it went in better.

No pictures, sorry, this was long ago.

When you're gluing these gear boxes in place, dry fit the engines into the wing root, so they sit flush with the engine when the gear well glue dries. They will need to be this way eventually.

Up next: Putting all the stuff above together to make a wing!

[Mark M.]

Getting the Gear, the Engines, and the Wings all in 1 piece:

You put the gear wells into the wing, and after all your tinkering they fit. Dry-fit plenty!!!

I got it all fitting and then put the gear wells in place, and glued the inboard wing leading edges together. If you've got the gear wells right, the wing leading edges inboard of them will not snap back open from the pressure. So I then set about putting the engines onto the wings. Note they are specific to each wing as the inner/outer curves are different because of the sweep/angle of the wings.

When I was done I had something like this:

The overall wings looked good, and they looked almost identical. However I didn't find out until I glued them onto the fuselage that one will have a much higher angle than the other. I'll cover that in the next section, but one thing I learned is that not only was the angle off, but the thickness of the wing root was off, as well! By careful comparison of the shape of the wing roots on the fuselage parts, as well as the shape of each top/bottom piece of the wings compared against the other wing, I found out that one of the upper surfaces was too short!

Naturally, this was all after everything was firmly glued. I found out which leading edge inboard wing was the culprit, then came up with a way to fix it.

I slid an exacto blade down the seam until I reached the engine. Luckily I didn't break the seams by the engine. I took a shim of plastic card just about the proper width, and sanded it down on a piece of coarse sandpaper until it was wedge-shaped instead of square. I slid this in between the wing pieces and created a gap. I glued it firmly in place with both upper and lower wings. After allowing the glue to fully cure I carved off the excess sticking out and sticking forward, sanded it down and puttied the rest. It worked perfectly. I think the thickness was .030 on the plastic card.

You can see in the first photo in this post that the engines meet the wings fairly well, but that the blending between the two needs some sanding and some puttying. However, this is simple enough after all the work you've put in. What's a little more sanding? Also, directly above the gear wells on the wing, where the engine curves into the wing itself, required some attention. Nothing too major. The end result is quite gratifying. I was elated to finally finish the wings! This was before I figured out most of the fuselage issues and I took it as most of the battle to finishing this kit. I was wrong, but at the time it sure felt good!

They sure look simple when completed, don't they?

[Mark M.]

Gluing the wings on

The bomb bay is a thick piece, and for the most part symmetrical. However, I still shaved off some of each side of it to better accomodate the wings during this part of the assembly.

I was more concerned with shaping the lower wing roots. I suppose I took off a lot of excess plastic, but I also shaved off some areas more than others to minimize gaps and puttying. I wanted the strongest joint for these wings, so I kept at it until they sat almost flush.

First, put the rear wings (horizontal stabilizers) on. You will need these to help align the main wings. Put them on as straight as you can get them.

I foolishly glued the wings on as soon as I got them flush.

You might not notice this because of the angle of the photo, but the wing I am holding has about two or three times the angle as the other wing. I didn't notice this at first. I was quite annoyed when I found out later. I had to break the wing off and clean up the mess. I ended up taking a lot of plastic of of this wing's underside to make up for the angle. I took off some from the bomb bay plate as well, because I didn't want a noticable kink in the smooth curve of the surface's finish.

Lounge Lizards to the rescue, they have a handy dandy reference that included this:

Note the angle. The wings are almost flat (just a couple of degrees if any) until the engines, and then they angle upwards. Most of their angle is after the engine nacelle. Also note that the rear wings' tips are just barely visible over each wing and meet at about the same point on each wing.

My starboard wing was almost perfect, spot on. I didn't adjust it at all. The other wing was then angled down to match this. When The stabilizers (rear wings) matched the main wing roots when I looked at it from dead-on-forward, I knew I had the right angle and glued the wing in place. I got it right, at least according to the line drawings.

Because I spent so much time fitting, sanding, and repeating, my lower wing roots were almost custom-tailored (thanks to me!) and had very little gaps to be puttied. You can see that the seam was fairly smooth. After wet sanding with progressively fine grit sandpapers, you can't even see the wing root seam in the photo above. Note the difference between that and the fuselage halves seam, and the bomb bay plate behind the wing trailling edges. Those seams are also flush sanded, but visible. The wing roots are not.

The wing leading edges match up very well to the fuselage and bomb bay plate, but the trailing edge wasn't so perfect. It had a bit of a corner in it where it should have been a smooth curve. You can see this as well. Some puttying and painting and sanding and the finished thing looks a bit better, but I never 100% corrected this.

The upper wing roots required a little putty, as did the trailing edges and there is also a lower-wing/upper-wing joint by the flaps line as well. A small amount of putty was used on the rear wings and parts of the engine to smooth out surfaces more than to fill gaps. At this point I have masked the clear parts and used white glue to fix them. I used white glue to cover the side windows for painting. Note a light coat of primer has already been applied (it is grey with a slightly blue tint) and this was sanded away in the process of cleaning up.

Up next: The landing gear! So painful it has its own section!

[Mark M.]

The Landing Gear

I don't know what to say. This was one of the worst parts of the kit, frustration-wise. If you build it with the gear up (in-flight) you will enjoy a head-ache-free moment of simply gluing the 1-piece gear doors into place.

However, if you are like me and wish your model to sit on its own gear for display purposes, let me describe the problem.

Here is the finished product of 2 full attempts:

I was so frustrated during assembly I didn't take any progress photos. You have a main gear strut that mounts onto fixed points on the leading wall of the gear well. That's the good news. The bad news is the strut doesn't sit 90-degrees down when viewed from the side.

So not only do you have a strut that has to swing backwards to match the length of 2 long, very fragile, soft plastic retraction bars, there is a mid-point where another strut must meet these struts halfway.

There are no location points for the 2 retraction bars. In fact they won't even reach the rear wall (I found by trial and error) when the rest of the parts line up. I ended up gluing them to the wall on the lower wing and letting them extend past the lip where you can't see very well.

The blue is the angle of the strut, the yellow is the edge of the lip, and the red is a circle around the point I glued them. The excess didn't reach the rear inner wall but you can't really tell this anyways.

You'll note on the first image the view of the gear from the bottom. If you don't line up the main strut with the middle strut (the half-way brace) the retraction struts will kink or dog-leg. I didn't notice this at first. I noticed it later. I was so annoyed at this time I said "screw it!" but my cat intervened. Said cat jumped on the model and literally shattered the gear. Luckily the gear all broke at the weakest point: the CA bonds (I had used too little), and most of the parts were intact.

After I redid it (with more swearing than the first round) I realized I'd done them better. They were mostly straight, and the red lines show what it looked like before my cat forced me to do a good job.

I have no quick answers for this one. It's a real pain. All I can suggest is that you leave the small piston off the mid-point strut. Focus on getting the right angles on the 2 struts so that they meet up on the retraction struts and make a straight line. Then use tweezers and CA and stick the piston in after the fact. I also put on the 3 small pressure tanks on the sides of the walls after the fact with tweezers.

Do what you can, as best you can. You CAN do it. That's the important part.

As for the rear gear strut, the hole in the fuselage is softly formed, a triangle with rounded edges. The triangular brace doesn't fit through there. I took a sharp xacto blade and a triangle-profiled iron file and made it fit into this. There's no point inside the fuselage where this secures, so I glued it directly to the cross-section of the fuselage itself. The placement for the tailwheel strut was simplistic. The rear wings have a semi-circle cut out of each side's placement pin. When they meet they form a circle, that the strut sits in. They did not line up. I carved it out a bit, cleaned it up, and put the tail wheel in it. It was not an easy fit. By that I mean it was on par with a matchbox fit, so nothing like the problem with the main gear wells you just hurdled.

I'm afraid dry fitting will not help you here, beyond making sure the 2 sets of struts fit into their slots/pegs. You will need to use trial and error (and in my case "... and error and error and error...")

[Mark M.]

Painting

You may not need help with this. I know I sure did.

So there it stood.

It was boxed, basically. I put it on a shelf for several reasons. I had conquered the hard parts, right? Well, most of them. I glued the lower nose clear part to the fuselage, and the forward gun position to that. The cockpit clear part and the upper nose part are glued with white glue. I intend to hold them in place with friction and remove them to show the interior. The problem is the forward fuselage had a crisp edge, but the clear parts were rounded. Mating them together left a gap, a trench. It wasn't pretty. Putty will fog clear parts, and simply painting it wouldn't fill the gap.

Much later I learned that Mr. Surfacer does not fog clear parts. This is a thick paint meant to act as a primer of sorts, but it has various grits. I bought some of the Mr. Surfacer 500, and used it to perfect the joint between the clear nose and the fuselage. This allowed me to continue after over a year's hiatus sitting in a box.

Now, how to paint this plane? I'm not a paint guru. Masking this would be no easy task. So I started by masking off the already-painted undersides (lichtblau) to protect them. I have a single action (VERY cheap) airbrush and it really is only good for solid coats of paint. So I started with light ghost grey for the grey.

Previous research into a Spanish Civil War 109C-1 I built showed me that this is the closest color to the grey I needed.

I did an overall coat of this. I let it sit several days and came back. I masked off those areas which would stay grey.

(The rudder came off with handling, it will be white so I left it off)

Here the instructions let me down. They only show one side of the fuselage. I had to extend the pattern based on what I knew and on the camo for an Italeri Ju-86 with Spanish Civil War markings as well. I shot dark green onto this (RLM 71 I think).

After letting this acrylic paint cure for a couple of days to ensure it doesn't peel up, I masked the areas which would stay green, so that the remaining areas would be painted brown.

I shot the last color, the brown. Instructions called for a color not available in model paint anywhere I could find. I used "Dark Earth (ANA 617)" from the Model Masters enamel line, as it was the closest I could find. It turns out that it's passable for my needs.

It doesn't look like a solid coat from this picture, because the paint is rather glossy and slightly wet. The difference becomes clear when we unmask all 4 layers of tape.

I still need to paint white over the wingtips and some minor things. I pulled out the white glue windows and started unmasking it. I will put in fresh (unpainted) white glue windows, or maybe I'll buy some of that "Clear" glue folks have typed about, just for this purpose.

A few small specs peeled up with the tape, so I need to make minor touch-ups. I have some small assemblies left (exhausts, propellors, guns, dustbin, etc) but I'm closer than ever to being done!

[smutz]

WELL DONE Mark you're the only guy I've seen build this beast :P , never seen one built at any shows either.

I got the early one you are building got totally pi##ed with it & binned it, bought the BoB He111 thinking they'd tweeked it to fit now..... in the loft now. Seeing your great build has rekindled the urge to get the early one again thanks for proving it can be done.

Andy .

BTW at telford last year spoke to some of the guys from the Luft SIG they said two kits to avoid like the plauge are this one & the MPM

He 177.....proved em wrong mate well done.

[Mark M.]

Wow. Just wow. I tried to apply the cockpit instrument panel decal and the thing literally disintegrated into individual pixels. I even used the hottest water my tap could provide (fairly hot!). Mere seconds after immersion it just shattered.

I can probably recreate the instrument panel from Mike Grant 1/72 instruments (I have this sheet already) but I can't do anything else until I know the rest of the decals won't shatter also.

Any suggestions? Are there aftermarket sheets for the spanish civil war? (I doubt it, as this is the only kit in this scale with the long nose)

How did everybody else do their decals?

[Big Kohona]

Mark, you should be able to piece together markings for your SCW Heinkel. Off the top of my head, Blue Rider made some - although not specific to the 111, they could be adapted.

As for your remaining decals, maybe a light clear coat (Mircoscale makes / made a clear coat specific for this problem).

Hope this helps. Your problems aside, what a great job on the 111. Your "write up" is excellent, I am looking forward to the next installment - hopefully with some good news for your decal problem.

[Big Kohona]

Mark, just had an idea. If the markings are some of the ones I think they are, what about scanning (or photocopying) your decals, making templates from that and then just airbrushing them on?

I think it would look really sharp!

[WymanV]

I didn't use the decal-I just drybrushed the raised bits. And it didn't matter. There's no seeing it through that thick canopy (which didn't fit).

Ken

Edited June 28, 2008 by WymanV

[Patrick_Nevin]

BTW at telford last year spoke to some of the guys from the Luft SIG they said two kits to avoid like the plauge are this one & the MPM

He 177.....proved em wrong mate well done.

Just as an aside Andy, not to detract from Mark's excellent work - what else did your guys say about the Grief, specifically? It's one of those models that I know sooner or later I'm likely to buy...

Patrick

[Mark M.]

WynamV, I'm leaving the canopy unglued so I can sit it next to the plane, and look into the cockpit. If you recall the instrument panel is blank and clear. I've painted it (I have no clue why they molded it clear!) and found out last night how it would fit perfectly in the cockpit without needing the canopy, but nothing to dry-brush!

Kohona, I'm not too keen on airbrushing the markings on. I don't think that would turn out so well, just knowing my own limits.

I may try liquid decal film, but to be honest they're a bit out of register anyway.

[Mark M.]

As I mentioned, the decal shattered for the instrument panel. So I went out to the LHS (I don't get to do this much, not much free time) and picked up the liquid decal film for repairing old decals.

Even with this liquid decal film, the decals shattered horribly. It prevented them from pixelating into fine granules, but they were still completely unusable.

I don't know by which means Roden printed these decals, but I'm sure one of those "epic fail" images on the Internet could put in a picture of a Roden decal shattering and sum it up nicely.

Okay, so I need decals. I looked at the Italeri sheet for my Ju-86 but they're not the right size and the proportion of the white stripes in the roundels is way off.

So I searched the Internet... Can't find any decals for this one. I even went to flightdecs.ca and went through EVERY company they have listd that had a 1/72 or a "roundels" category.

Aside from a couple of 109s I can't find any spanish civil war style markings. Before you ask, the 109s' roundels are far too small. I have one on my display shelf already and held it up to the Roden decal sheet, and the diameter of the roundel is less than 1/2 of what my Heinkel needs. Not to mention the number codes would be wrong and it wouldn't have any tail art.

On the other hand I found some info I was looking for in another thread:

http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index....howtopic=158579

So now I can button up the underside!

[breadboard]

Mark, How about 1/48 scale markings - I cant find my roden kit right now

give me diameters and I may come up with suitable items

[KursadA]

Thanks for sharing your excellent work, Mark! This is probably only the second or third built-up Roden He-111 kit I have seen. I have been going through the somewhat painful experience of kitbashing the Roden nose and nacelles to the Hasegawa kit to build a Turkish He-111F1 (it is still in the paint shop. photo below). Even dealing with the nose and nacelles was a lot of work, can't imagine what building the whole kit would be like..

Kursad

[Mark M.]

Very nice kitbash, Kursad!

Breadboard, the large roundels for the wings (4 total) are 2cm exactly, with 2mm white stripe thickness. The fuselage roundels (plain black) are about 9mm, with the code numbers either side of it (25*92) being 18mm tall. These numbers are 6mm wide as well. The tail art (in this case it looks like a stylized falcon diving with a bomb underneath, on a black background with red border) is about 9.5mm counting the red border.

I'm pretty sure I'll have to paint the black rudder stripes (sigh), and I have to redo the instrument panels from Mike Grant instruments, as I've already de-molecularized the kit decals.

Edited July 13, 2008 by Mark M.