1/72 Bf109 E4 and E3 (quick pics)

[Peter s]

My battle of Britain set continues:

Bf109s have always been a curse for me. I've done so many "adequately" and never been happy. A combination of yellow being a difficult colour, the success of the model depending on the cammo colours being "just right" (I've done a few that should have been right but just didn't look it) and the fact its a really small model. This is about as small as I can go without losing detail.

I used the same paints as the Stukas in exactly the same way with the RLM71 (vallejo) plus extra gray-violet added. Thats really helped. The counter colour is their 71.044 "Grau" whichis allegedly RLM02 plus RLM65 hellblau (Incidentally I had a couple of bottles of this colour mislabelled as graublau which really confused me) . The blotches on the side were done using a cotton bud in place of a paint brush and more or less dry brushed on. The cotton bud gives a more random shape than a brush with a slightly defused edge. I left the horizontal tailplanes off the kit until the blotches were done. The fact the rudder is a separate part is also really handy on these kits.

The one on the ground is the E4 kit, the one "taking off" is the E3 starter kit. Both done with Xtradecals from the Luftwaffe Battle of britain sheet (I've used almost every decal in this set so far!) The E3 was a little experiment based on a trick I used to use on big armour. The tanks were outrageously expensive so to fit stowage and figures I'd drill into the stowage/resin crew and fit a neodynium magnet. These are incredibly strong for their size. A steel plate on the inside of the tank lets you fit "bits" without glue and without damaging the model. The E3 has a magnet between the wings and there's a corresponding magnet on the stand. Its a touch wobbly (lucky its a small kit) but I've used a larger magnet on a Spitfire and its a really good result. The magnets are 20-50p each on Ebay. /media/tinymce_upload/f1f8b8753f43a8fa5bbdcd110f88d4b2.jpg/media/tinymce_upload/b4e1f74bdc0922a4ef48aa7b17ed0d13.jpg/media/tinymce_upload/e0800f55f6d5bd5ee8a244b66ef3905d.jpg/media/tinymce_upload/e7443834da712ed638870e625f2e69c0.jpg

[Dark Earth]

Very nice Peter,

I like the paint work.  The mottling on the E4 looks great !.

Chris

[Peter s]

Thanks! As I said 109s have always been a bit of a curse for me. That mottling is so easy to do badly (although ironically I think the real thing was originally just daubs of paint to try and get rid of the blue sides) Learning that I should paint the yellow first, mask off & trust the masking throughout the rest of the build was another bit learning moment. I've tried doing it with RAF leading edges too. 

You'll see more of these guys when the whole BoB project is complete. I'll line them all up together.