This is the Hasegawa 1/48 Bf 109E, kit Jt11. I got this as a bagged kit, which is why there is no scan of the box art. I effectively took two kits to build this, and, as with the Oscar, I thought it turned out poorly.

I started to build the Revell kit (04572), which has the same plastic, although it does not have the photo etch that the Hasegawa kit has. I was not happy about how it was coming along - I couldn't even get the fuselage to fit together properly, and this kit is ofter described as a fall-together kit. I was going to build the plane in the desert camo, to replace the Tamiya kit I had built earlier in the same colors. However, when the kit was ready for painting, I realized that I had used to wrong air filter - I had used the non-tropicalized one. (I actually realized this while I was exercising.) So I had to look for an alternate scheme. The night fighter was one of the options from the Revell kit, and it's a simple scheme, so I chose it.

The windscreen was masked using the appropriate EZ Mask, but the canopy itself was masked by hand. The black is Floquil Engine Black, which seemed a close match to the coal black that was recommended. The hue was fine, but it came out very rough. I thinned it with Ronsonol, which I've used with other enamel paints without any problem, but this did not work well. Even a couple of coats of Future - including one applied by hand - helped. There was a lot of silvering. I used quite a bit of Microsol and Solvaset, which helped somewhat. I was so fed up with the model that I didn't try anything else.

There are also a couple of omissions. I missed masking the center line in the rear canopy piece, so it didn't get painted. I also forgot to put the PE in the canopy, but truth be told, I probably wouldn't have bothered even if I had remembered.

Page last updated February 14, 2024.