Another Special Hobby 1/72 Bf-109E

Aircraft World War II
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Friends! Just in time for Christmas, the Evil Trio is finished!

We’ll do them in order… Let’s start with an E-1 from JG 27, a light weight variant with machine gun armament as opposed to the E-3 that had 20 mm cannon in the wings. They were manufactured in parallell so it is not that the E-3 is the successor to the E-1.


I like it a lot with that yellow nose!

And then there is the E-3 of Werner Mölders.

And finally we have Gerard Schöpfel’s E-4 from JG 26. This is the one that best represents my vision of a Battle of Britain 109 even if the E-1 above was actually shot down over England in September 1940!


Gerhard Schöpfel survived into our time, living until 2003 when he was 90.

Finally I realised that I have now actually built both the antagonists from the E-4 box art so let’s dust off my Arma Hobby Hurricane from a few years ago!


The difference in size is fascinating, especially the Hurricane’s wing is enormous compared to that of the 109.

As usual, they have now moved to the collection

Merry Christmas all!

:raising_hand_man:

Magnus

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Really a nice Schwarm of Emils, Magnus. Well done! They don’t look evil to me at all. I like them all, everyone has its own character. The one with the yellow nose we call facetiously “Gelbnase”. I have also one here. On the other hand the German Bundesluftwaffe had for many years F-4F Phantom II called “Schwarznase” because of their black radom :grin:

Merry christmas and a happy new year to you, too!
Torsten

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Great work on the Emils Magnus. Really appreciate the differing marking you have finished them with :smiley:

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A beautiful trio Magnus!

The size different is massive! How do they compare with a Spitfire?

Fighter planes got larger and larger in a very short space of time during WW2… Comparing a Typhoon or Tempest or an F6F with earlier craft is really interesting! :cowboy_hat_face:

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@BlackWidow and @litespeed I’ve consciously tried to select the schemes to get the different looks and characters, I’m glad you like them! I have more of these to do and there are more interesting schemes to choose from, a white-nosed one is high on the list.

@Russelle I’ll get out a Spitfire for the next photo session, I do know however that even if the Spit is smaller than the Hurricane it is still a bit larger than the 109!

As I posted earlier, a fourth build has sneaked into this thread. I have done my best to apply what I have learned during the earlier builds of the same kit and ended up with a model that is much more complete before painting, I’ve even attached landing gear and doors. Almost armour-style where everything is glued before committing to paint :slight_smile: ! I can thoroughly recommend this approach even if it asks for a bit more care when handling the model. Handling all the fiddly stuff after painting wasn’t easy either!


White primer and all the black areas around the wing roots and exhaust painted using NATO-black while wingtips and locations for national insignia have been painted white. Masks in place, I did them as circles with loose bars for the crosses, I am not sure how clever it was though…


Wings are masked and the national insignia painted black…


…and on to my favourite thing: removing the masks :grin: !


Back into Masking Tape-Hades once again. It was tricky but doable with a bit of patience and a circular cutter to make the rounded paint demarcation in front of the exhaust stubs.


And after a massive RLM 02-session, only the fuselage markings were left to do!


Markings were scanned from the decal sheet and created in “Silhouette Studio”, the program delivered with the plotter. Took a bit of time to get it right, it helps if one has used the “unsharp mask”-command in a photo editing software since it does need a bit of tweaking of the parameters in order to find and create the borders around the numbers. I usually draw everything in Creo using the scans as a background only but in this case it was a rather complex design that would have taken quite a bit of time to draw and apart from that I think it is useful learning more of the capabilities in Silhouette Studio. Anyway, this was the result!

I wish you all a continued Merry Christmas. I still wait for Santa to turn up with the Arma-Hobby P-51B, maybe today…

:raising_hand_man:

Magnus

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It will be worth the wait :smiley:

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And so the decals are on as well! I’ll be away skiing for a few days over the New Year so this one will not be finished before that but it will be a flying start for a much better modelling year 2022!

@litespeed Mustangs have arrived. They were indeed worth the wait :grin: ! Sadly, I HAVE to go skiing (I tried to simulate a broken leg but neither wife nor daughters bought it) so can’t start them until a few days into the new year.

:raising_hand_man:

Magnus

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Magnus, I’ve been absent from your builds and must apologise as your trio are great, beautiful builds all three but if I had to pick a favourite I think personally the E-4 just takes the top spot.

Now I’m along for the ride with the new Legion Condor.

Oh just a word of warning, Hannants has some of these 109’s on special offer at £8.99 each!

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Magnus, you’re really building a reputation as the Master Builder of 109’s! Fantastic work! :cowboy_hat_face:

Enjoy the skiing!!!

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Fantastic builds Magnus. You sure pack in a lot of detail.

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@Littorio I’m glad you like them :slight_smile: ! With four of the Special Hobby kits AND a double-boxing of the same kit from Eduard, I think I leave the Hannant’s offer well alone :grin: ! I also know that I won’t be able to resist any new boxings either so I better not buy more of the ones I already have, I wonder if the next one they release will be North Africa or Galland themed?

@Russelle Thanks! I finally have found my calling in life :grin: !

@HGBARNES Thanks! The kits are really super in that aspect, they are really world class for the time being when it comes to detail!

I’m temporarily doing something completely different for the time being, I promise to come back to this one soon though!

:raising_hand_man:

Magnus

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“…come back to this one soon…” - in this case “soon” is a bit less than three months :grin: !

I’ve been doing a bit of work every now and then on this one, a wash really popped the details and some weathering added to it as well.

I got tiny white speckles in the paint when I gave it the first coat of RLM 02, I’m not sure where they came from but a badly cleaned airbrush is a prime suspect… Anyway, I tried to overpaint them but didn’t get the paint to match that well, I kind of like the effect of bleached paint so I went over the rest of the panels as well. Sometimes even I am lucky :slight_smile: !

:raising_hand_man:

Magnus

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Personally its one of my favourite colour schemes for the Bf 109 E. Such subtle weathering Magnus, it looks excellent from the photos :smile:

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@litespeed I was a bit worried about doing this fairly monochrome scheme when starting it, I’ve never been that confident that I can make something interesting out of it. In this case I had a lot of help in at least three ways:

  1. The surface detail is so nice that you just have to do a light wash in order to get the model to look a lot more exciting.

  2. The relatively light colour is a lot easier than for instance a dark blue Wildcat or Hellcat.

  3. The fact that I, due to bad airbrush cleaning standards, managed to spread a multitude of tiny little white dots all over the model that I had to touch up. With a paint that I didn’t manage to match to the base coat :slight_smile: .

Actually, the major contributor was 3). Isn’t it satisfying to know that negligence and coincidence are the two dominant parts in the recipe for success? :grin: :grin: :grin:

The canopy is just wedged in place, I’ll substitute it with a vac-form (that I thought I had :slight_smile: ). The canopy is by far the weakest part in these kits, even if they are clear they are a lot thicker than what is desirable and I can’t understand why considering the quality of the rest of the kit. I have a Rob Taurus canopy on back order, I don’t know the quality of these but they do seem to be the only ones generally available for the time being.

So, the Evil Trio has now expanded into an Evil Quartet!

It has now joined the trio in the collection!

:raising_hand_man:

Magnus

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Happy accidents Magnus. Really pleased it worked out in the end :smile:

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Sorry, I can’t help myself…

We’re on our way towards an evil quintet!

:raising_hand_man:

Magnus

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I can’t wait to see this build.

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Nice :smile: Just checking the marking options on the PDF instructions as I was curious about the ‘snow’ part of the title. Particularly as three of the marking options are dressed for the desert. Noticed the subject of the boxart was based at Mariupol, Ukraine…

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@phil2015 Stay tuned :grin: !

@litespeed I’ll go for a very traditional North Africa machine. And regarding the title, it could be a sign of literary ambitions, “Braving sand” doesn’t feel like a good tag line, you need something more and that could very well be the reason for the snow :slight_smile: !

:raising_hand_man:

Magnus

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It’s becoming a bit of a 109 farm over there :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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