Type VII C Hull

Revell made a 1/72nd scale Type VIIC U-Boat. This was the standard German U-Boat from WWII. They were in production and in use from before the war until the very end, in several different versions. This first kit comes in a lot of variations, and I am doing one as a waterline model.

I cut the hull in half, it is a full hull kit and cutting the lower half of the hull off was very time consuming.

I used a small spacer to help hold the hull and deck together. It is the spacer that comes with the kit, but I had to cut it down to fit too.

These are the big left over bits from the hull surgery.

Here is the hull after the lower part has been cut off. Once the hulls are cut down, I have to glue sheet styrene to the bottom so the hull is smooth.

Gyro Finish

I glued the little rear wings to the back of the fuselage.

I had to file and sand the joins down, but they turned out pretty good.

All in all, a difficult model of a rarely used Luftwaffe aircraft. Still, it is an interesting aircraft used by both the Army and Air Force by the Germans in WWII.

Two Gyros Please

The two Fi 265 Gyros drying on the paint bottles.

I had to block off the paint bottles so they would not roll away.

I also used a bit of clay to hold up the models so the landing gear would not touch the ground.

Clean clay does not harden and it is very helpful for making tools to hold model parts in place. I keep a little ball of it in my model tool box all the time for just such projects.

I flexed the rotor blades so they would droop down. Then I turned them over and held them in place with the hub while I glued them. I used the weight of a couple knives to keep them in place.

GyroCopter Construction

I used more rubber bands to hold the fuselages together. I used the clear Testors Window Maker glue to fill in some of the window gaps.

The Window Maker fills gaps and dries clear. It makes great windows. The Regular glue is great for joining plastic parts, it is easy to apply in small areas.

Once I pieced together the landing gear, I used a couple of the paint bottles to hold the model off the table and allow the legs to dry without touching. I actually used the glue almost as a contact cement. Apply glue to both parts and wait a moment while the plastic softens before joining the parts.

This makes up a pretty good model, but the real aircraft is kind of goofy looking.

Flettner Fi 265

I built two of these gyrocopters at the same time. I glued both halves together and then held them together with rubber bands. I buy those little rubber bands that women use to make pony tails. They are sold in the hair care products section of many stores and a lot of them are only a couple bucks. They are so cheap you can cut them off without having to worry about the expense.

I built two V2 missle types and two Me109 fighters and these two Fi 265 all about the same time.

The Me 109 was the primary German fighter in WWII. I have several in my collection and I am building more. Even up to the last few days of the war, the Germans could still muster enough planes on the Easter Front to acheive limited air superiority in certain areas.

The Fi 265 kit has a lot of little bits for the landing gear. It is a complex gear and a difficult kit to put together. Not for beginners.

The parts are not molded well, but with a lot of trimming they are okay.

Ykreol

http://www.ykreol.com/ This is a sneak preview of several new figure sets from Ykreol.

Ykreol has released a new line of prone figures in 1/72nd scale.

These figures just arrived in the mail from my friend Yves, who owns the company. He often sends me a few samples for review.

This stack includes WWII Germans, winter, WWII Russians, and WWII Berlin dead Germans.

These figures fit perfectly with Caesar Miniatures, and fill a gap of prone figures. They are cutting wire, lifting and planting mines, standing by with grenades, loading machine guns and of course, being dead. Look for more photos of individual figures and a review soon.

Gyrocopter

One of the most difficult parts of this model was gluing down the windows. They did not fit well and I spent a lot of time trimming. Eventually, using a combination of super glue, epoxy, Plaststuct, and regular model glue and clear window glue, they came out pretty good.

Use good quality brushes. I get mine at art supply stores, mostly. They have a wide variety and the brushes will last a long time. Some of these brushes are over 20 years old. I really like sable bristles. Theses small brushes were important for the cockpit details and pilot.

A toothpick can come in handy when applying glue to small places. I like five minute epoxy because it drys fast and you don't have to hold the parts in place long.

Having a lot of glues is important so that you can glue different materials together.

I used Testors, Gunze Sanyo, and Tamya paints on the cockpit and pilot.

Fi 265

The Me 109 was the main fighter for the Germans in WWII. They made thousands of them.

They also made some unusual and very advanced designs, the Fi 265 was a gyrocopter.

This 1/72nd scale model is a mixed media kit of the Fi 265. It is a very difficult model kit for advanced modellers.

They served mostly with the WWII German Navy, but some served with the Army also. I built two at once, one for each service. They made fewer than a dozen, but they were well liked. There were plans to make thousands of the follow on version, but due to production problems, it never happened.

I rounded up a couple figures for pilots and used them to staff the aircraft.

Missile Kit

The Germans developed many versions of the V-2 missile in WWII.

They had mobile missile launching platforms that could be set up in minutes and the missiles launched, support vehicles moved out before the Allied planes could show up.

This is one of the long range piloted versions. They were planning to hit New York City with several of the long range missiles.

This 1/72nd scale kit was easy to put together and looks very nice when it is done.

The kit has few parts and they fit together well.

S-Boat Weapons

The stern and mid-ships is filling up with equipment and weapons. Here the 37mm AA gun is ready for action.

The 20mm AA gun has been installed in the gun tube at the bow.

The new captain looks over the bridge before the vessel is commissioned.

Twin 20mm AA gun amidships is ready for action.

The 37mm AA gun, single 20mm AA gun, twin AA gun and four torpedoes and several depth charges make this a very heavily armed small ship.

Revell 1/72nd scale S-Boat with Revell WWII German Navy crewmen.

S-Boat AA Gun

These bits make up a complex AA gun for the bow of the S-Boat.

Once constructed, it makes a nice gun.

Life ring at the stern.

I really like the very large binoculars on the bridge.

Most of the stern is still pretty vacant, but that will change soon.