This really excellent cast resin kit arrived in 2010 and spent a few years intimidating me. Then I stepped up and took all the parts off their casting blocks, and put everything in another model box. Which I promptly forgot which box! Ran across it a few months ago, going through stuff, thought about it. It ended up Project #3 on the New Year’s Resolution.

This kit came out several years before the much cheaper ICM kit. The cast resin is incredibly well-done. Also fragile, since the wing struts are all “to scale”

Not a kit for beginners. The “instructions” are drawings of various things put together. You figure out which/what/how.

I’m torn between doing the tri-color splinter camo for a Spanish Civil War version or the faded/worn winter camo for an Eastern Front airplane.

Cockpit done. As a matter of fact, right now the fuselage is setting up, glued together with slow-setting CA

3 attached images. Click to enlarge.

@blackadder57: Turns out, someone did that kit in a review over at Modeling Madness, and said while it had its issues, it was pretty nice. His photos show a nice model. Not that I am any sort of Hs-126 experte, but it scores an 8,5 of 10 on the LGTM (Looks Good To Me) scale.

In fact, there’s no proof, but given this kit came out in 2009 and the ICM kit in 2010, it looks to me like someone at ICM “peeked” at the Vector kit.

Well, I am definitely asking myself “Self, WTF were you thinking?!” This has turned out to be a much easier project than I thought. That’s mostly due to it being a Vector Resins kit, since Sergey does the very best resin casting of anyone. Everything fits, and with care goes together easily.

I had to sand down the fuselage centerline seam, brought it up with an ultra-fine grit sanding stick, and only needed a very little bit of CA glue along the seam on the lower fuselage.

It really helped to pull out William Green’s “Warplanes of the Third Reich,” since there’s a 3-view of the airplane there, which helped get the angle of the gear and the angle of the struts on the wing right. You’ll notice i knocked off one of the cabane struts – yes, Virginia, this is a fragile kit. Fortunately, when I test-fitted the wing, it was obvious that strut would be OK and not noticed once painted.

The only aftermarket I am using is Eduard seatbelts in the pilot’s seat. There are molded belts there, but not really apparent.

Once I get the belts on the seat and the seat in the cockpit, and the incredibly-beautiful clear cast resin windshield and canopy on, it’ll be time to go paint. Discovered reading Green that the Hs-126s used in active service in the Spanish Civil War didn’t have that flashy splinter camo, just good old 70/71/65, much easier. The other was done after the war when they remained in Spanish service in Morocco.

5 attached images. Click to enlarge.

It sure looks like the resin is top quality, because that’s a very fast build indeed.
Anyone who has Vectors resin sets knows it’s quality, it really is miles away from most competition in my opinion.
I’ve read that ICM produced their kit in cooperation with Sergey, who knows. The fact is they’re very look alike even in the breakdown of parts.
The canopy is the only real “fault” of the ICM kit, because the Henschel had a flat top and ICM reproduces it with a slight curvature.
Now if that curvature bothers the modeler that much then Vector sells their canopy as an AM set, and guess what? It’s a drop fit.

Great build. here are a few photos of the same model that I did a few years ago…

9 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Otherwise, the model is beautiful, the cast resin has excellent detail and I really enjoyed the build. The markings are of the Hs-126B-1 used by the 7th SS Gebirgsjaeger Division “Prinz Eugen” in Bosnia and Croatia in the summer of 1943.