Given the rush to get these three kits done, I haven't detailed the final steps in this blog.
So, I decided to recap the initial impressions and issues I've documented and add descriptions of the final touches for each aircraft in turn.
Dragon Me 262A-1a/U4:
– There is some flash on parts, but that is easily dealt with.
– There are some sink marks and warping of parts, particularly lower rear port fuselage half.
– Although moulded as a single piece, the U4 nose/fuselage join requires sanding smooth and a bit of filler on both fuselage halves.
– The gun bay is detailed and has a good representation of the cannon breach mand magazine, much of which won’t be seen anyway, but the gun cover panel fit is poor and requires some trimming.
– Etched metal seatbelts are included.
– The instrument panel is good but has no instrument decals so needs to be painted.
– As it has a tricycle undercarriage, the kit requires lead weights in the nose to prevent tail sitting.– The port wing root fairing is deeper than the wing thickness.
– The lower rear wing/fuselage join is problematic.
– The tailplane slots sit slightly too high so I opened them a little to get the tailplanes to fit correctly.
– The front engine nacelle/wing fit is poor and required reshaping.
– When Dragon took over the Trimaster moulds, they replaced the white-metal parts, including the landing gear, with plastic pieces. Unfortunately, they failed to realise that the nose landing gear leg for the U4 is not the standard aircraft leg as it rotates 90 deg as it retracts and has different gear cover attachment requirements. Dragon supply the standard leg which therefore needs some modification.
– I replaced the rubber tyres with True Details wheel set, although I reduced the amount of the bulges so that they didn’t look like they are flat.
– The nose gear main doors are a butt-fit attachment to the fuselage with etched metal actuator struts that don’t fit. I only knocked one of them off before I finished.
– Inner undercarriage doors have vague location/attachment points and etched metal actuator struts. I took a leaf out of the Hobby Boss and Tamiya kits and glued a small, thin wedge of plastic between them and then joined them together and then attached them in place as a single piece. I added the actuators after this.
– The main undercarriage leg attachment is an awful design, being barely more than a butt-fit attachment. The main gear covers are also difficult to attach and required some trimming to fit correctly.
– I replaced the lost port aileron etched metal control rod with flattened brass wire.
– I drilled out the gun muzzle flash holes and reshaped the tip to match photos.
– After repeatedly knocking the kit part off, I added the lower aft aerial using a short section of a dressmaking pin.
– The lower whip aerial mast is very close to the starboard main wheel and would prevent it from retracting. I’m not sure if that is my fault.
– I added a short section of thin copper wire to the rear canopy and attached aerial wire using Infini Model Fine (0.082mm) Aero Black Rigging line, the first time I’ve used this product.
Colours:
RLM 81 Brown-Violet and RLM 82 Bright Green over RLM 76 Light Blue.
The nose is RLM 82 Dark Green over RLM 02 Grey-Green.
The German national markings are over painted with RLM 71 Dark Green.
9 attached images. Click to enlarge.
