the lower fuselage; joining them to
the fuselage at this stage provides
some added strength to the oil
cooler cowling. I left this assembly
to dry overnight. In the morning I
found that I need some iller here,
but nothing drastic. I also added
some Albion Alloy aluminum
tubing to create the drain tube
and support strut on the panel.
I now test-itted the landing
gear and this showed an issue with
the mounting point. There is no
positive locking of the landing
gear struts into the wing. I used
a Micro chisel to scrape out the
wheel well attachment point until
I got a good it for the landing gear
struts. The legs and tail wheel
strut were set into place with
Tamiya cement and the assembly
was left overnight to set hard.
Next I added the oil cooler
exhaust lap. The instructions
are vague on how it goes on but
once I igured it out the it was
good. When I build my next one
I’ll thin the trailing edge.
The rest of the little parts were
now added. I thought the pitot
tube and aileron mass weights
were too big, so I fashioned a new
pitot tube from Albion Alloy’s
slide it aluminium tubing. I had
to live with the mass weights as I
did not have any extras around.
The locations for the pitot tube
and the underwing radiator were
pretty vague and required the use
of my 109 Dataile to place them
properly. The resin radiator in my
example had a small air bubble in
it but it was quickly taken care
of with a touch of Tamiya putty.
The canopy pieces were
masked with the providedmasks. These worked okay(even
though I am not a big fan of vinyl
masks, preferring the yellow
Kabuki-tape type) except for the
top of the forward canopy, so I
just used the mask as a stencil to
cut some Tamiya tape to shape.
Don’t forget to add the gunsight
glass prior to adding the canopy.
The canopy sections needed
some sanding to it properly,
but nothing drastic. They were
carefully attached with Tamiya
Extra Thin Cement before the
canopy opening was masked of
with Tamiya tape, as were the wheel
wells and landing gear struts
The propeller was built up and
the nose cap added. This was okay
but I had some sinkholes on the
backside that required some
illing. The landing gear
doors are supplied in resinfor the 109A and I found that I had
to sand them down slightly. As you
look at the part from beneath it is
noticeably thicker at the front, so I
sanded it down until the thickness
was uniform from front to back.PAINT AND DECALS
There is plenty of conjecture and
speculation over the colour of
these very early machines. Some
suggest that the machines were
painted silver and others that
they were the early version of
RLM 63, which was a very light
grey like the V-1 prototype. Still
others claim that the aircraft were
natural metal with a thin layer of
green-tinted protective coating.
Whatever your school of thought
it is quite evident that the aircraft
were in fact painted, as the wingWWW.SAMPUBLICATIONS.COM • DECEMBER 2018 • 9
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