nickel-silver tube from Albion Alloys, and tiny
drop of CA.
The rest of the fuselage was a breeze to
construct, with the rear section comprising
only simple halves, with a bulkhead and tube
within that eventually holds the central, main
undercarriage wheel. I needed to remove a
couple of the locating pins before I could fi t
these together due to a slight misalignment
issue. AK’s Xtreme Metal Aluminium was also
airbrushed into the lower half of this section.
As for the rotating central section, this is
constructed from two parts which form a spool.
Over this fi ts a slide-moulded exterior skin. I
did fi nd that many parts had a slightly
rough/jagged fi nish to edges, and
these needed to be addressed
as I built the model. All three
sections were now kept
separate, pending the
scheme being applied.
Rotors, Ramjets And
Fins
Four identical sprues
contain all of the parts for
the fi ns and the retractable
undercarriage arms with their
clamshell covers. Assembly of
the arms was simple, but these
were kept to one side until a little later.
They are designed to be posed in retracted
or extended positions. Firstly, the two-part
fi ns were assembled with Tamiya cement and
after clean-up, MRP’s Mr Putty was applied
to the visible ends to hide the seams that
would show with the gear arms extended.
The fi ns/stabilisers were now fi tted to the
lower fuselage section. A quick smear of Mr.
Dissolved Putty was required to remove a gap
that ran down the same edge of each fi n joint.
Another three identical sprues contain the
parts for each of the rotors and the ramjet
units that are fi xed to the ends of them. Each
rotor is a simple upper and lower panel, with
a plug that pushes snugly into the centre unit
sleeve. Assembly takes just a few minutes,
and clean-up is straightforward. The detail on
these parts is beautiful, with fi nely engraved
panel lines and rivets. Each ramjet consists
of a two-part cowl with a separate nose ring.
Internally, there is a perforated plate and
an intake/starter engine vane. Like an idiot,
I didn’t see the latter had a protrusion that
was actually a detail, and I snipped them
off. These were later replaced by drilling the
part with a 0.8 mm drill and installing a short
length of styrene rod. Xtreme Metal Aluminium
was airbrushed in the interiors of the ramjets
and they then were closed up before seams
were removed. Each unit was then fi tted to its
respective rotor. A little Mr Dissolved Putty was
again needed to remove a small adjoining gap
at the front of the leading-edge area.
Any Colour You Like...
The beauty of Luft’46 is I can create
any scheme I like, perhaps within
the convention of recognised
colours. Before I started, I masked
the canopy using some MRP
Issue 169 - http://www.modelairplaneinternational.com 551:48
Gluing the nose section together was fairly
straightforward. A little pressure needed to
be applied to the fairing at the rear of the
cockpit, closing up a very small gap that had
crept into the assembly.The rear fuselage section
is very simple to assemble.
A small bulkhead supports
a tube into which the gear
strut fi ts. The latter was left
out until fi nal assembly.After the seams
were removed,
panel lines
and rivets were
reinstated.The central fuselage section
consists of a fi xed, two-part drum,
and a free moving collar that sits
over the top of it.Four of the sprues contain the parts for this fi n and
undercarriage assembly. The gear strut was left off until later in
assembly as they could easily be plugged and unplugged.As the gear struts were
to be extended, I needed
to remove the seam
at the very edge of
each fi n/stabiliser. Mr.
Filler was used for this
purpose.All four fi ns were
now fi tted to the rear
fuselage section and
the central drum glued
into position.Each rotor consists of just two parts. These were
assembled and the seams removed from the leading
and trailing edges.