1/48 Tamiya He 162

by Rian W. Jones

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When the Tamiya He 162 kit was first released, I bought a copy and started work almost immediately.  At that time there were no aftermarket sets for this kit, so I set about to add lots of scratch-built detail.  I started with the cockpit.  The  ejection seat was inaccurate, so I added scratch-built details such as foot rests, hand rails and the ejection lever, all from Evergreen plasic bits and wire.  I fabricated seat harness attachment poins from fine wire and used the only prefabricated aftermarket parts in this build, Eduard PE seat belts.  Detail was added to the side walls and instrument panel from fine wire and stretched sprue.  I scratch built the Revi gunsight from plastic rod, soda can aluminum and clear accetate sheet.

The front landing gear has an unfortunate ejector pin mark on the oleo.  I cut the oleo out and replaced it with aluminum tubing.  This allowed me to position the wheel in a turning attitude.

The main wheel bay is detailed with various diameters of wire and solder.  Various sizes of hex rod are cut and used for compression fittings and disks punched from plastic sheet with my Waldron punch and die set were used to fill ejector pin marks.  Brake lines are added to the main landing gear from wire, solder, stretched sprue and hex rod.

The Jumo jet engine is detailed using various sizes of wire and solder for plumbing, hex rod for fitings, Tamiya tape cut in thin strips for tie downs and hose clamps and stretched sprue.  The engine is painted in various shades of Alclad for the bare metal and Tamiya Semi Gloss Black.  The inside of the engine covers are Alclad Aluminum and post shaded with highly thinned Tamiya Flat Black/Red Brown mix.  The antenna connection wires are twisted copper wire and the cable ties are made from thin strips of Tamiya tape.  The loop antenna is cut from an aluminum soda can.

The cannon barrels and pitot tube are fabricated from various sizes of stainless steel tubing acquired from the Small Parts, Inc. (http://www.smallparts.com/products/descriptions/htx-tw.cfm).

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The model was airbrushed with Tamiya Acrylics shot through my Tamiya HG and Iwata Revolution Airbrushes.  After gloss coating with Future, kit decals were used and sealed with another coat of Future.  A light wash of Windsor Newton artist oils thinned with turpenoid was applied and various chalk pastels completed the weathering.  The entire model was sealed with Model Master Flat Lacquer.

The scratch-building was fun and a break from using resin and PE aftermarket parts.  I used various on line walk around photos and a visit to Planes of Fame to see a real He 162 for reference.  The Tamiya kit is great fun to build, even if you don't go "all out" like I did.

Rian

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Photos and text © by Rian W. Jones