Some He-162s

[McGreig]

I've been working on some He-162s recently. They didn't start out as a collection, all being started at different times - the Mistel over 12 years ago and the Jumo-powered conversion last week - but the release of the Hobby Boss kit prompted me to get the older ones out and have a go at finishing them.

The flying bomb and the grey He-162 are from the Dragon Mistel kit, the two tone grey He-162 is Lindberg, the Jumo conversion is a Hobby Boss kit and the swept forward version is a Frog fuselage mated to the wings and tail surfaces of the Merlin He-162D kit.

All are destined to be finished in Soviet colours - if I try to finish a model without either red stars or large areas of red paint, I break out into a sweat and my hand shakes too much to continue    

[McGreig]

The Mistel should be ready for Telford. It's had its first coat of Klear and now just needs decals and a final coat of matt varnish. This was not fun to build - unlike a Ju-88/FW-190 combination that I built, the three decker trolley/bomb/He-162 arrangement (perhaps inevitably) doesn't provide a very rigid structure and the whole thing seems rather too fragile for my liking. Also the He-162 is over-complicated and doesn't fit together too well - my least favourite He-162 from a building point of view.

The markings on the He-162 will be real world but the combination with the flying bomb is definitely a whiff

[McGreig]

I have fond memories of my original Lindberg He-162, bought around 1967 from the long gone Clyde Model Dockyard in Glasgow, so this is a bit of an exercise in nostalgia.  A bit chunkier than later kits, with no cockpit detail and a simplified nacelle shape, it's easy to build, fits together well and is reasonably accurate for a kit if its age.

Information on Soviet He-162s is a bit sketchy and contradictory. However, "Red Stars 2" suggests that the Russians didn't capture any intact He-162 but had incomplete machines assembled under their control at Rostock and the MBI volume on the He-162 indicates that the Russians also considered continuing with production of the aircraft for the VVS. So I've finished the Lindberg model in a Soviet scheme to represent post war Russian use.

[McGreig]

Although not a clone of the Dragon kit, the Hobby Boss kit is clearly heavily influenced by it. It has been extensively reviewed elsewhere on the forum, but the main problems which I found were that the canopy frame line is in the wrong place, the fit of the parts is not that good and, on my example, the rear fuselage had suffered shrinkage to produce a slight banana shape and an angled join with the front part. However, all these, including the canopy, were corrected with a little filling, sanding and polishing as necessary and I would much rather work with this than the Dragon kit. The engine for the Jumo conversion came from a Matchbox Me-262.

And finally, the swept forward version. I seem to remember reading that the man behind Merlin died in the last year or so. What I'd like to know is how he avoided being lynched years ago by a ravening mob of embittered modellers!!??   The Merlin He-162D is second only to the Pegasus EAP as the worst kit I've ever tried to build.   In the end, I mated the Merlin wings and tail to a Frog fuselage but, if I hadn't been determined to get at least some value out of the Merlin kit, I think that I'd have got a better result by laminating new wings from plastic card.

I don't think that the Jumo or swept forward versions will make it to Telford, but you never know - - -  

[Brian da Basher]

Those are some stunning 162s, McG! I like your Jumo-powerd and swept-wing versions best. I'm looking forward to seeing how they look with paint and markings. Nice work!

Brian da Basher

[Tojo633]

Nice kits

Sounds as though your from glasgow, Sadly i never had a chance to go to the Clyde model dockyard. I would suggest you meet up with TSR2 Joe at Telford, he may have his staffel of hobbyboss ones there or maybe his nuclear bomber.
Cheers
Sandy

[McGreig]

The Mistel is finished. The codes and fin logos come from the Hobby Boss sheet, but the red stars are from an old Scale-Master sheet as photos of the Soviet He-162s all show stars with white and red borders but the Hobby Boss decal sheet has plain red stars.

[Radish]

Crackin' truly terrific!!    

[McGreig]

Another view. I'm quite pleased with the result, given that it's been sitting half built for most of the last twelve years. And as the He-162 is real world and the flying bomb isn't, I'm optimistic that this may cause some confusion at Telford :ar:  

[fabe]

Another view. I'm quite pleased with the result, given that it's been sitting half built for most of the last twelve years. And as the He-162 is real world and the flying bomb isn't, I'm optimistic that this may cause some confusion at Telford :ar:

Wow that looks nice!! I built the Revell Mistel a long time ago and always wondered how senseless it would have been to waste two precious jet engines when allied bombers incinerate your cities.... You wrote that you can't build a kit without red stars, did you consider  the other countries which use(d) a red star in their national markings?
Albania
Romania
Hungary
North Korea
Yugoslavia
Kazakhstan
Belarus
China
Mongolia
Nepal  

[B777LR]

Gekko did a bunch of nice african Me-262 profiles a while ago. Some of those schemes would look nice on a He-162  

[Ian the Kiwi Herder]

Great work.... inspirational too !

Ian

[McGreig]

The Jumo He-162 is moving faster than I expected and may well be ready for Telford. However, I'm not sure that I was right in preferring it to the Dragon kit - the canopy is a real problem.

The incorrect frame can be dealt with by sanding and polishing but the large lugs moulded on to the bottom of the frame to allow it to be slotted into the fuselage are something else - at some angles they are extremely visible and look like flaws in the canopy. Also, this is the second canopy on this model - although I used liquid cement sparingly round the cockpit rim, the first canopy was fogged by glue drawn up the lugs by some kind of capillary action and on to the interior    The new canopy has been attached by Clearfix and had most of the attachment lugs removed but it hasn't completely solved the problem - has anyone else had similar issues with this kit?

Anyway, this is where we are right now - it needs to be masked for the main grey coat and then it should be details, varnish, decals and Telford.

[McGreig]

Another photo of the Jumo He-162, along with the Lindberg kit. I like the way that the Jumo engine gives a significant alteration to the He-162's outline.

Tojo - you're right, I have to admit to a Glasgow connection    I moved there from Edinburgh aged 8 and escaped back to the East Coast when I went to Aberdeen at 18   .

Fabe - yes, I often use the Chinese and Yugoslavian red stars in particular to get a variety of models into my (real world) collection.

[Brian da Basher]

Those are absolutely crackerjack, McG! There's something about adding red to a Salamander that just does it for me. Excellent work!

Brian da Basher