Hobby Craft 1/48th BF-109G-4, Romanian AF

Well, I got the Bf-109 wrapped up this weekend. I had a couple of bumps in the road getting to the finish line, however. Somewhere during the eighteen years in the stack the gunsight, antenna mast and one of the aileron weights fell off the sprue. I got a gunsight out of the spares box and added a clear plastic lens to it. I then scratchbuilt a new set of aileron weights so they would match and also made a new antenna mast. I added some chipping to the plane with Vallejo Aluminum and also added some more fluid leaks and stains. Exhaust stains were airbrushed on using Vallejo Rust. I drilled out the gun barrels for the nose mounted weapons to make them a little more realistic as well. I used the kit decals and due to their age I clear coated the sheet with Testors Dull-Cote to keep them from disintegrating. The decals went on just fine over the Vallejo Gloss Varnish and had no issues with them. The plane was then given a flat coat of Aeromaster Flat Varnish. I added some mud to the main wheels and tail wheels using Vallejo Rust. I then installed the Squadron Vacu-Form canopy and that fit fine as well. The small details were then added such as the aileron weights, pitot tube, and antenna rigging wires. For the horizontal line I used stretched sprue and for the vertical line I used metal wire, which is taut so it would just lay against the sprue. Insulators were then made by adding a drop pf Micro Kristal Kleer. The nav lights were then added last. The plane depicted is a Bf-109G-4 from Grupul 7 Vanatore of the Royal Romanian Air Force. All in all this was a fun build and the Hobbycraft kit builds up into a good replica of the -109.

Regards,

Ian

Now that looks really nice, the combination of bright markings and the dark green works for me!

Oh yes, I do like that a lot Ian. You've made a first class job of that. Very well done.