Heinkel He 162A-2 "Salamander" Revell | No. 04723 | 1:32

https://www.scalemates.com/kits/revell-04723-heinkel-he-162a-2-salamander--147836

I think I started to build this kit in 2017 or 2018 and deviated from the instructions by assembling and painting the fuselage, the wings, the tail, the wheels, engine covers, canopy etc as sub assemblies. This was as far as I got before I put it on shelf and it sat like that up until recently when I pushed myself to finally complete this. so it has only taken me 6 or 7 years ..

the kit dates to 2012 so there are many online reviews and articles on this kit. I chose to close the engine covers as I knew I had not the patience or the skills to scratch build and upgrade the details on the engine. The kit had some parts to pose the engine covers open - but to pose them closed there was nothing to locate or fix the engine covers into position. I ended up glueing in some sprue pieces onto the engine as mounting points and then test fitted many times over before glueing in one engine cover and then waiting for that that to dry before glueing in the 2nd engine cover. ( you might spot the piece of masking tape I forgot to remove, before final clear coat and taking photos, that I used to line up the base of the engine cover with the engine intake piece in red ).

the same issue applies to the wheel bay doors which only have plastic tabs but nothing to help locate the door in the correct position as another plastic connecting rod piece then has to be glued from the inside of the door to the landing gear strut. the angle of the wheels is also very narrow.

I thought I would have alignment issues when glueing on the wings and tail but this was not the case and I was relieved.

i added considerable lead fishing sinkers behind the pilots seat to stop the plane tail sitting as per instructions ( as there is not much space in the nose cone ) - resulting in what I thought was a very heavy fuselage to hold in the hand but once I had attached the wings and tail it was barely enough weight to hold the front wheel down I noticed when for example brushing dust off the wings the model feels like the nose wheel shifts position easily at the slightest touch.

the rest of the build has no issues, i had to use reference photos when attaching the antenna on the underside of fuselage as the kit instructions did not show this clearly.

the panel lining was done with a 6B mechanical pencil I was testing out this technique at the time before I had gotten into using panel liners and oil washes

I chose to close the canopy but i'm happy that some of the cockpit details can be seen through the clear plastic.

a good kit which unfortunately has not been re-issued since 2012, so hopefully revell does so again

8 additional images. Click to enlarge.