I started in on the 1/48 Heinkel HE-115B floatplane, a Special Hobby kit a week ago. I have hardly anything to show for it so far, lots of canopy masking - 12 clear canopy parts, with much framework, very minute PE parts, resin, etc. There are 7 steps in the instructions for the interior, I have completed two. I may post some images as I go along if deemed worthy and not too shabby.

A real interesting plane, though, and big too, longer than my 1/48 B-25, even without the nose cone. Once its up on its floats it will take up some space for sure. The floats are longer than any of the 1/48 scale single engine planes I've built.

1 attached image. Click to enlarge.

Try looking in the kit & find something you can glue together & not affect anything else. That's what I do when I feel like I'm getting nowhere.

I have never built a "Special Hobby" kit before. I mailordered this one, because I wanted the plane. Unsure about Special Hobby, if a manufacturer I was more familiar with offered a HE-115, I would probably have got that instead. This is a little weird. For example,

-there are no pins and matching sockets to help align the fuselage halves,wings or floats

-the sprues have letters, but no numbers for the parts. So if the instructions say part G3, you have to turn back to the front of the instructions for a diagram of sprue "G' to see which part is 3.

• there are two identical, symmetrical interior parts that go on either side of the fuselage. One is resin, the other is not, hmmm...why?

and so on...

It is different so I am taking it slow and easy.

Special Hobby's are definitely buildable, but more work than usual. I have built quite a few, their biggest advantage is kitting airplanes NObody else will do, a 1/48 He-115 for instance. The lack of locating pins is no biggie, just glue carefully. The most impoirtant thing with these is TEST-FITTING. Before you glue anything, make sure it will go where it's supposed to, (after you figure out where, sometimes the instructions are vague). Mostly problems are encountered with the interior parts, floorboards, bulkheads, instrument panels and such. Sometimes I glue in support strips and tabs ( like the old Monograms had) to hold things in position for test fitting, and more secure glueing. Engine mounts can be another pitfall, you might have to invent your own mounts for these too sometimes. Wing to fuselage fits can be fun, but this is a mid-wing so should be OK. I bought this kit for my kid, want one myself as I do like this airplane. Somebody on Hyper-Diaper did a real nice one, if you care to search. Happy building.

Thanks All,
Bill -"hyper diaper" - thats funny!...I did read a build report on Britmodeller pointing out some of the pitfalls, including engine mounts - there seem to be none, also all the interior parts vs. the fuselage halves, and lack of wing mounts - these huge wings are supposed to just be butt-jointed on. Maybe they get sturdier after they are also attached to the float framework. So I am proceeding very carefully, considering and planning to augment the kit as needed to make it fit and stay together.

Vague instructions? Well they are not great, maybe they could be worse.

Ralph:

    Love the tediosity! Mind if I use that? Real appropiate in a lot of builds.

Bernard you are welcome to 'tediosity'.
Here's another term I coined you can use as needed. Though not so applicable to model building, anyone who has to use computers much can probably understand it: "Disimprovement" This can be applied to a lot of things but un-asked for software 'upgrades' imposed on users by others are what caused me to come up with it.

Ralph:

     Absolutely! Gotta have them "upgrades" so beloved by IT folks everywhere. 

     Somehow, it just slows things down and is less efficient than the previous, but it shows their hearts (?) are in the right place. 

      Or, after a fairly disasterous implementation, it is sidetracked, for further study and/or a "better" version. 

        I used to see this when I was working on a regular basis. 

         I was impressed, I can tell you. 

Bernd:

          One of the guys in my club calls his "the closet of shame". I also like "shelf of doom".