Little something. My way : )

[Aigore]

Fantastic work, Gabor!! My eyes hurts :P

[ya-gabor]

Hi Aigore,

 

Good to see you around here! 

Well this is 72nd scale, a "bit" smaller than your fantastic gigant Viggen.

The real problem here is that so little is known of the S-199! Even the Czech have very little information left about it, mainly of crashed aircraft. There are so many questions during the build for which the modeller has to find (try to find) answers. It takes a lot of time off from the actual model building.

 

I still dont know what the outside and the inside colours will be. Simple, even they dont know exactly what it was. Unfortunately the museum pieces (all 3 of them) raise more questions than they give answers.

At crash sites in the past years many small pieces, panels, service doors were recovered with the original colour but still there is a lot of misunderstandings. 

 

The S-199 was nothing new, or to be exact they were not new built aircraft, all of them were in one form or the other recovered from WW2, prefabricates, purchased from other users, mainly G and K versions. They added a new engine to it, which was still available so the rework of the nose part. Apart from this the whole story is a very dark mix of bit and pieces from here and there. Try make sense of it all and try to build a normal kit out of this!!!  : (  : (  : (  Not easy! 

 

Compared to this the VIggen strory is . . .  : )  : )  : )

 

 

 

Best regards

Gabor 

[chukw]

Marvelous work and supreme attention to detail- cheers, Gabor!

[ya-gabor]

Little more work on the external fuel tanks, or rather the pylon on which they are suspended. They have a very distinct shape and fortunately many have survived to this day so it is possible to have a closer look at them. The Kbely museum example in Prague has the pylon so it was there for the manufacturer to examine in every details.

 

 

In the end the 72nd S-199 Mezek kit received a simple scale down of the 48th scale pylon from the Me-109G series.

 

 

 

 

Tried to get the right cross section. Added all the missing details and made a cast of it. A couple of resin replicas were made for future use.

 

 

 

Dry tested the new pylon on my S-199 kit. It will never be used on it but still who know what will future bring.

 

 

 

 

Best regards

Gabor

[ya-gabor]

Speaking of pylons.

Looking at photos of IF-01 it was obvious that this particular plane carried the ETC-500 bomb rack for the 250 kg bombs. It was widely used on S-199 by based on period photos. The problem is that there is no such bomb pylon available in this scale. I did ask one aftermarket manufacturer about this but they said they have no intention what so ever in doing it, since there is very little interest in this. Possibly some other aftermarket Co. will make them. Some time in the future. I don’t have that time, the kit build is now. So there was no other way left but to make it myself. Took out my good old trusted "3D printer" used all the past decades and off we go.

 

 

 

 

 

Took a piece of thick styrene and cut out the basic shape. It was further refined by looking at drawings and photos. Surface details were added as well as the distinct sway arms and internal details of the lock and connections.

Silicon mould was made and a couple of resin casts of the ETC-500 bomb rack came out at the other end. While at it, two versions were made of the rack.

 

 

 

 

So with this the IF-01 should look a bit more authentic.

 

Best regards

Gabor

[Aigore]

There is something awe inspiring to watch someone deal with such miniscule details...

[ya-gabor]

Nothing special or spectacular this time, but what one could expect from a small kit like this (or my work).  

A lot of work is going on in the background but here is a dry run to see how the kit will stand in the end. No glue was used. Of course the fuselage was taped together but for example the undercarriage was just a snap fit.

 

 

 

Hope next time will have some photos of the minimalistic cockpit, my way.

 

Best regards

Gabor

[ya-gabor]

As indicated earlier the spring loaded hand hold doors / vents are in the wrong place on the 72nd S-199 kit design. It is an inheritance from the 48th scale Eduard Me-109 set. Stretched sprue from the kit was used to fill the holes which I cut based on the kit original surface details. Dried, cut to size and sanded to shape, polished. The rivets in the vicinity were also filled.

 

Based on photos (see them in earlier post) the new position of the hand holds was drawn on plastic and drilled out, cut to shape, sanded with micro needle files. New doors were cut from slightly bent thin styrene. Cut to shape and fitted in place, glued in slightly open position.

 

 

 

 

 

Best regards

Gabor  

[ya-gabor]

Not a lot, just a little adjustment work this morning to the tail wheel of the kit. A little clean out of the unit was made to make it more authentic around the tire. For comparison the original untouched wheel from the kit is put beside it.

 

 

 

There are actually two versions provided for the bubble top packing of the S-199. A long tail unit and a short one. The short version is unfortunately only included in the Bubble Top version of the kit on main fuselage sprue 70150E. The common sprue C for all kit has only the long tail unit. There was enough space on sprue C so it would have been better giving both versions as alternatives of the tail wheel as there were many mixes on particular aircrafts. But I am sure the designers know best.

 

 

Best regards

Gabor

[ya-gabor]

At last had the chance to correct the slats. The “step” at the back of the bay for the slat was reduced to minimal and at the same time those slat actuator rail positions were made in the right position and also in a visible way.

 

 

 

 

Something similar to the original.

 

 

Best regards

Gabor

[Cubs2jets]

WOW!!  That is beautiful work on the slats.  My hat is off to you!

 

And in 1/72 no less...

 

C2j

[ya-gabor]

Photoetch technology made the company what it is today. Without it there would be no other aftermarkets from them but also no plastic kits!!! Photoetch is a fascinating technology which can produce and replicate extremely small parts, very fine details very accurately. OK, it is a completely flat product but with bending and annealing it can result in real little gems! If anyone remembers photoetch products from this Czech company way back from the late 1980’s and 90’s then surely they will say there were some really fantastic things! Extremely complicated in some cases but amazing pieces!

 

Why do I mention all this? The Dual Combo S-199 kit comes with a small photoetch. On it there are German pedals for the cockpit. WOW!!! Really something else. Now they remind me of those good old days, capturing some really fine details which make it look something really special. The thickness of the photoetch gives back a nice scale reproduction of the real thing.

 

 

Looking at some other photoetch sheets made today by them, one will see some oversimplified parts. Parts which are “workable” for the more average modeller, easier to do, to apply . . .  It is a more business approach with view on wider target group of modellers. Still I miss those complicated and far more refined photoetch parts. They were a joy to work with. Flimsy, extremely small, difficult but still a joy! And of course the carpet monster was also happy to get some food!

 

 

I love the pedals for the cockpit so it was obvious that I will use them instead of the simple plastic parts integral in the kit plastic part. But when tried to fit them into the cockpit they looked oversize and kind of out of place there. Compared the plastic pedals and put the photoetch next to it and it was obvious that they are not the same 72 nd scale. The plastic ones look more scale correct, but the photoetch are far more detailed. So the dilemma is, which one to use.

I know in the past several questions were asked about the true scale size of some Brassin products and the regular reply from the manufacturer was that it is not really possible to calculate the shrinkage of the resin. So you had the same parts in plastic and the replacement “super detailed” resin parts and they had a considerable size difference while supposedly were of the same scale.

 

As far as I know the possibility of shrinkage with photoetch is highly unlikely. So what happened here? It would be nice to have a real measurement of that Me 109 pedal on a museum aircraft somewhere around the world. At least it would be good to know which parts are right.

 

 

Best regards

Gabor       

[ya-gabor]

The wheel tires have a thread on them as seen on period photo of a crashed aircraft. In the kit plastic parts this is partially reproduced but of course on the running surface some of the details are missing. The additional grooves were added.

 

 

 

Best regards

Gabor     

[ya-gabor]

The S199-185 which was coded IF-01 was special in a way. It did have the reconnaissance cameras added inside its tail between frame 5 and 6. Did it actually have the cameras, did it carry them? It is difficult to tell now, but one thing is for sure it did have the 2 camera ports and the very distinct rain guard strips around them.

So before closing up the fuselage I wanted to make the camera ports. Here is work in progress.

 

 

 

Best regards

Gabor

[ST0RM]

Catching up. Great work still!
Interesting note on the camera ports. 

[ya-gabor]

Hi Storm,

 

On a Czech forum (my build is shown there in parallel with ARC) several fellow modellers have mentioned that in the new issue of Revi magazine there is an article on the Photo Mezek versions from the author of the once was 4+ Publications (remember them???).

 

I have seen the article although dont have a hard copy of it. Received help from a fellow forum member with some images of the article. Thanks to him!!!!

It is interesting! I don’t read the Czech text (more the historic background than technical details), only see the photos which are far more important from a modelling point of view. There was one image in particular which had a lot of information!!!!!!

 

Unfortunately I don’t think that this article will be repeated in the Eduard INFO on line publication. Actually I had translated the Czech version of the INFO since it is one article ahead of the English monthly INFO. In Czech version of INFO for September there were already 3rd articles about painting / markings of real S-199’s back when they were manufactured. It is fascinating that so little is known about production. The actual colours used on them is a complete mess with only general guess work going on! It seems that not even the actual numbers built are know! Manufacturing data and documentation simply lost or destroyed completely. What a mess!

 

The actual work on detailing the camera ports on my kits was already made many weeks ago. In late spring I had a detailed look at available information on the internet. There is a lot available with some excellent details. It is visible that the Czech photo conversion is basically the same as the original Me 109 recon versions. Fortunately on many internet photos of crashed Czech S199’s the camera ports are visible and all the work on my kit was done based on this. Also new additions were produced for the instrument panel. The Revi article adds some more details to the story but it has little effect on the actual kit build, but still it is interesting!

 

 

Best regards

Gabor