new tool Airfix 1:72 Messerschmitt Bf 109 E-4 - first one finished - (edit 06 June..)

 My first one finished (although I must add some trim tabs..) - in an 8./JG 54 scheme (pilot Lt. Erwin Leykauf, five vics on the rudder mid-1940) from the Aeromaster 'Green Hearts' sheet with the 'Piepmatz' cheeky sparrow cowl emblem. I'm pretty pleased with the kit, less so my hamfisted attempts to touch up the canopy framing where my masking went awry. Aerial mast from sprue, as I've broken two trying to get them off the sprue runners - same thing with the aileron balances. I've added a horizontal splitter plate in the chin radiator from plastic card and brake lines from 5 amp wire. As pointed out elsewhere (thanks Mikey)  if you are doing a model with the flaps down don't forget that the ailerons were linked to the flaps and would both droop to 10 degrees. This is so easy to do on the Airfix kit the way the wing is laid out. Just a couple of scribes along the front of the aileron front inside edge and you can then carefully bend them down the required amount. Having pulled a Tamiya Emil kit out of the stash for  a quick comparison, the similarities between the two kits are striking - although the Airfix kit has the better detail options and a three-piece canopy. Can't be beaten for the price - about 50% less than the Tamiya kit in the UK, if not more....and despite what some Airfix detractors have posted on britmodeller and elsewhere there are no particular problems with wing dihedral or the tailplanes on this kit - far from it. The faults that are present are really just minor niggles... 

 Here's something I read over on britmodeller.com recently. (again thanks Mikey - I'd never really considered this particular 'theory' before...)  Why did some Luftwaffe fighters have white I.D. wing tips and engine panels and some yellow ? One theory has it that when in August 1940 Goering demanded that the fighters stay close to the bombers, nose and wing tips and in some cases even the horizontal stabiliser tips were to be painted Yellow. Of course yellow is a bad colour for coverage even with modern paints  and it is difficult to imagine that they were any better in war-time in the field?  Perhaps, just perhaps, the white we sometimes see on Luftwaffe Battle of Britain fighters is the undercoat for the yellow topcoat yet to be applied. 

Personally I've always thought that the white cowls and rudders seen on Battle of Britain Emils were those flown by Kommandeure and/or Staffelkapitaene, pilots like Wick, to take just one example of an Emil ace whose aircraft featured a white cowl for a period. And another point against this argument is where we see - as here - rudder victory Balken painted on..a white rudder ....

By way of comparison, a view of Airfix 1970's mould Bf 109 Emil in the Battle of Britain colours of III./JG 26 reissued during 2009/10 (IIRC) - not a bad kit either really, once all the raised panel lines are sanding off..although the canopy doesn't fit very well unfortunately..