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Me 262 A1a model aircraft kit
The Me 262 is a popular subject with the kit manufacturers with Tamiya, Hasegawa, Revell and many other firms producing kits over the years in various scales.
Here we take a look at the late 90s tooling of Revell's Schwalbe which is a 1/72nd scale aircraft kit.
On opening the box there are a total of five sprues as pictured below. Four of these are moulded to a good standard in medium/hard very light grey plastic, whilst the fifth is the clear sprue with the split canopy. On my example the canopy mouldings left something to be desired. Aftermarket vac-formed canopies for the Me262 are widely available and cheap however.
The surface of the components for this Me 262 is moulded with a very smooth finish and carries a lot of finely engraved detail including excellent recessed panel lines. No warps and hardly any flash on my model kit.
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The two main sprues left and right.
Click on pictures for enlargements.
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The third small sprue, the fourth sprue containing front mounted rockets and the canopy parts sprue.
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The decal sheet for the Messerschmitt 262
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Assembly of this kit is straightforward and enjoyable. On the one I built everything fitted together with an exceptionally good level of fit, though care needs to be taken when glueing the front wheel well to the lower front fuselage plate.
Another point to keep in mind while constructing this Messerschmitt 262 is the need for weight in the nose (it needs a lot of it). I reckon this must be common to just about all plastic model kits of the Schwalbe. I put two large nuts in the nose and plenty of filler to keep them in place and it still wanted more, so I filled the front mounted tanks with more metal. You could also add some weight to the front of the engine nacelles as they
project quite a way forward from the Cg.
The Junkers Jumo jet engines themselves are moulded in just four pieces each and fit together easlily. My examples needed a slight bit of filler on the top parts forward and aft of the wing (after fitting to the Me 262's wing).
The wing is moulded with one full span lower section and two top surface pieces, fit here is excellent as it is for the near triangular section fuselage.
The cockpit consists of a tub to which is fitted the intrument panel, control stick and seat, all of which is well done. Two bulkheads are glued to this tub, these being used to locate the assembly into the fuselage.
The wheels and undercarriage are real great with diamond tread and fine well moulded detail, there's a couple of ejector pin marks on the tyre sides but these are easily dealt with. The front wheel well has a bit of detail but the mains are mostly plain. Interestingly there is a lot of fine detail on the underside of the cockpit tub and in the fuselage sides suggesting that one might cut open the wheel wells on the wing to display this. No mention is made of this on the instruction sheet however.
A couple of examples of Messerschmitt Me262 are covered by the well printed decal sheet, and of course there is a massive amount of choice out there for aftermarket decals.
To sum up this is one real fine kit of an important and well before it's time jet aircraft.
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