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SMER [Hi Tech] 1:72 ME-262A-1A/AVIA S-92 |
Reviewer:
Mark B (SMAKR Webmaster) (smakr@bigpond.com)
Kit Built + Review Submitted:
27 January 2003
Kit Details:
Smer Hi-Tech art: 0886 1/72 Me 262 A-1a/Avia S 92
Aircraft History:
The Me 262 has the recognition of becoming the first jet aircraft to attain service status in 1944 (in contrast it was not the first jet fighter to fly). The Me 262A-1a was the first series production model and was used as a single seater day fighter, known semi-officially as the Schwalbe (Swallow). It carried an armament of four 30-mm cannon and was arguably the most formidable warplane to attain service status in WW2, launching a new era in aerial warfare. Although it required a large runway length and was a bit underpowered, it was renowned as a pilot's aeroplane and offered a marked speed over any predecessor. It's shortcomings included manoeuvrability and in spite of its gracefulness and attractiveness (it was one of the most aesthetically pleasing aircraft of its era!), it proved relatively easy to shoot down once counter-tactics were employed, and the initial fear in opponents overcome.
After the Second World War a dozen Me 262 aircraft were assembled from original components in the Czech AVIA factory, of which three were two-seat Me 262B-1a trainers designated CS-92. The others were Me 262A-1a single-seat jet fighter aircraft and were designated S-92 in Czech service, all of which, of course, were the first jet aircraft serving in the Czech Air Force.
The Kit:
I've previously written an inbox review of this kit, so feel free to have a browse of that for some surplus information not contained here, such as an image of the decal sheet and etched set. For the main, what can be reproduced here has been. This is a Hi Tech kit which means that it is the Smer standard boxing with an etched fret of about 18 parts plus an acetate film for the instrument panel included. The assumption is that this is also a reissued Heller kit.
Four sprues of 45 light grey injection molded parts with raised panel lines come in a plastic bag, and convey typical solid Heller quality so I am pretty confident the kits origins are thus. There is a very small amount of flash to clean up from some parts, as well as mold seams and a few nasty ejector pin stubs which must also be removed. The kit appears to be the two-seat Me 262B reissued as a single seater, because all the sprues bar the one with the fuselage say Me 262B on them, and include such items as the tandem cockpit for the two-seater and the not to be used nose radar antennae. Because this kit is marketed under Smer's Hi-Tech label it also comes with an 18 piece silver Eduard etched set with the SMER logo also on it, plus an acetate film for the instrument panel. The etched set typically is for essentially a fit out of the cockpit with rudder pedals, instrument panel console, harnesses amongst the stuff it caters for. A one-piece injection molded canopy is also provided in a separate bag as well, saving it from scratches but it does have a thick lug attached to it that will be fun to remove without damaging the canopy, which is a bit cloudy anyway!
Instructions:
This is provided in the format of a single large A2 sheet folded up into roughly A4 sized double sided pages, making it difficult to use at times, as you have to fold it over itself or inside out, particularly from the first set of construction steps to the next. A brief history, including technical description and specification data in English, Czech and German, along with modelling tips and symbol explanations take up two pages and a list of Smer kits takes up another. The actual construction steps take up two sections and there are ten exploded assembly views that follow the standard Heller/Smer blocky pattern which is pretty easy to follow but might be confusing on exact placement in some areas. There is no painting information provided during the assembly process. The last three pages are devoted to large three-view diagrams (side, upper and lower) for the three versions produced by the kit - although two sketches are actually four-view diagrams. For painting information on these schemes Humbrol paints are provided in addition to RLM shades where appropriate.
Construction:
In my inbox review I suggested that this kit would pretty well go together like the Me 262B marketed by the same company. Obviously that is absolutely spot on because it is the "B" kit reissued with a new single seat version of the fuselage!
Construction starts with the subassemblies of cockpit, undercarriage, engine pods and wings for the first nine steps. The etched set can be used mainly in the cockpit area with instrument panel (and acetate film), rudder pedals and seat belts provided. An identical instrument panel is also supplied in plastic so you can make the choice on what you prefer to use, as are some of the other replacement parts in the etched set. This kit was being built for a four year old's birthday to 'zoom around in the air', so I wasn't going to spend much time on the cockpit, although I did use the etched instrument panel and seat belts. Both added a bit of extra detail although the instrument panel was slightly larger than its plastic counterpart and not quite as good a fit. The instrument panel is in two parts with a separate face glued onto the main panel and the acetate film affixed to the back.
The cockpit consists of the two seat tub into which the instrument panel, seat, rudder pedals and control stick go. The best advice I can give you at this point is to somehow remove the rear seat as the tub will not fit into the fuselage half as it is - more on that later. There is a little bit of side panel console detail but only beside the pilot (the rear seater has no detail). Everything fits quite well into the cockpit but there are a couple of ejector pin marks which can do with some attention, so you can move onto the undercarriage and wings assembly. RLM 66 was used as the cockpit colour.
The undercarriage is simplistic but reasonably straight forward to sub assemble. The instructions are not overly helpful with precise placement, particularly with the small etched part (which must be bent) that appears to be some sort of mud guard on the main wheels. A small part must be removed from the nosewheel as directed in the instructions, I assume a part only belonging to the two seater variant. If you are building wheels up, the main wheel bays have their primary and secondary gear doors molded integrally together which means you cannot fit the doors into place. You will need to either perform surgery and delicate slice the secondary door off the underside of the main door, or do as I did, and cover the gap with some putty. In any event the doors do not fit that well and a test fit and trim are needed before securing in place.
Assembly moved onto the engine pods. The pod halves have small aerials on the bottom of them which are extremely easy to break. This is all well and good for a bit of detail, but they really are difficult not to break. Having had experience with other Smer Me 262 kits I inserted the intake and exhaust cones into one half, left to dry, painted the internal areas (silver and black respectively) and then affixed the other pod half. I found the fit here better than previous attempts at inserting the cones in after the pods had been joined together, although they were still slightly misaligned. There were a couple of small gaps at the rear and front of the pods that needed filling, and this is where the fun in the kit really began!
The main wing assembly, excluding the affixing of the engine pods, is broken down into five parts, consisting of upper wing halves (which also have wing tip aerials that are easy to break), lower halves outside the engine pods, and a centre section. In past Smer Me 262 kits I have never really been able to get a satisfactory finish to the wings without a hell of a lot of work, and this was no exception. I mounted the engine pods to the upper wings and a test fit revealed the mating areas needed filing for it to fit, and carefully aligned them so there was no step on the upper wing surface. The centre wing section has cut outs for the main wheel bay but there is no wheel well detail at all. The centre section was fitted to the upper wings/engine assembly and there was no way I could get the wings to line up without a large gap. A similar story happened with the lower outer wing halves, which fitted quite poorly and large gaps were pretty much at every join requiring loads of putty and sanding to fix. On top of this the engine pods did have a small step on the underside of the wing which had to be filed down.
The completed cockpit unit is installed into the fuselage halves along with the nosewheel. The fuselage halves have some very nasty ejector pin marks which have to be removed to be able to install anything therein, and don't forget noseweight as the Me 262 is a notorious tail sitter (the instructions omit to tell you that). It was at this point I discovered that there was absolutely no way the two seat cockpit unit was ever going to fit into the fuselage half! Out came the saw, and I literally hacked off most of the second cockpit area, so this must be removed to have any chance of completing the kit. The resulting test fits of the one seat (crudely hacked off!) cockpit tub revealed that the fit was still extremely poor, and there was no way the fuselage halves would come together. In the end I had to carve off a fair amount of the side of the tub before it would finally fit. The halves were finally affixed together, requiring bulldog clips and rubber bands as clamps to keep it together. Some gaps and join lines had to be fixed up afterward.
Once the fuselage had been dealt with it was time to add the main wing assembly and it was of no surprise that the assembly would not fit when a dry run was undertaken. The rear and forward mating areas needed a judicious amount of filing, both on the wing assembly and the fuselage before a reasonable fit could be achieved. There was still a step to blend in and a great chasm at the roots which needed plenty of filler and sanding again. Going against the trend, both the cockpit (which had to be carefully removed from the thick sprue lug with a hobby knife to avoid damaging it) and tailplanes actually fitted quite well, although the etched part shown in the instruction sheet going between cockpit rim and canopy was left off.
The final stages of assembly were to add on the undercarriage sub assemblies and the small various external masts etc, and the gun port plugs for the Avia S-92 if you were building that version. Overall, fit was pretty poor, with plenty of filler needed (bring along a full tube I think!), and the instructions should have clearly warned you that the two-seat cockpit tub was never going to fit. There had to be a few late nights to ensure that the kit would be finished in time for that fourth birthday, and because of the ill fitting and extra work undertaken, that nearly didn't happen!
Colour Schemes:
There are Four versions that you can produce with this kit, three German and one Czech, which are as follows:
Me 262A-1a, III/EJG 2, piloted by Oberst Heiz Bär, Lechfield, Nêmecko, 1944-45. This aircraft wears an upper splinter camouflage scheme in RLM 75 Grauviolet and RLM 74 Dunkelgrau, with I assume, RLM 66 Dunkelgrau mottle effect, and Hellblau RLM 65 underside.
The second diagram states "Schema Rozmisteini Popisek" with no markings. After some initial confusion Wojciech Giemza provided the translation in English which means "stencilling scheme".
The final version is a Czechoslavakian Avia S 92, 1947 from an unknown unit and based in an undisclosed location, wearing the standard Czech RLM 02 finish overall that was applied to many of their aircraft during and after the war.
The fourth is Me 262A-1a III/JG 7 which is the subject on the bottom of the box featured in the image below - the other three versions are only catered for on the instruction sheet in black and white.
Bottom of the Hi Tech box which includes markings
and colour scheme for one of the versions:
This version is not covered in the instruction sheet, but you will still need
the sheet to place stencils since they are not shown here
Note: RLM shades provided with Humbrol paints - not all these paints are exact
matches to RLM quotations as you need to mix some paints from the Humbrol range
to achive this - see Painting paragrah below
Painting:
I went with the version on the bottom of the box which basically has the Me 262 finished in RLM 81/82/76 which matches reference material regarding late war colours of the Luftwaffe fighter aircraft. However, the Humbrol numbers depicted are probably there for convenience factor than anything else in being close approximations since there are no single Humbrol tins that reproduce the RLM colours denoted. My matches indicate FS 34087/34096 and 35622 would be closest matches respectively. I ended up using H98 anyway, H105 and H127 respectively since this was basically a quick kitbash and these are close enough if you are looking for single Humbrol paints to use.
Decals:
Produced by Propagteam the decal sheet looks very good, with sharp colour register, matt appearance and thin decals with little carrier film. There is also a reasonable amount of stencilling provided, although not absolutely comprehensive and the swastikas are provided in halves. They are quite difficult to apply and I suspect come from the earlier Propagteam "vintage". Soaking time is not long but you need to time it pretty spot on because if you tug them from their backing sheet too soon they might rip, or if you leave them in too long they become soft and will curl into themselves and disintegrate. To further compound the issue, they don't like to move once they are on the model even though they do bed down well. I had a few problems with decals breaking and got pretty frustrated (in spite of extensive experience with early Propagteam decals!). In the end since I was going to a deadline, I couldn't be bothered with the kit decals, and used one of the three Me-262 decal sheets I have in my spares instead (Extratech I think) and these went on without a hitch.
Accuracy:
Overall one would have to say that the accuracy is solid without being perfect by any sense of the word. It is slightly underscale by a couple of millimetres resulting in a slightly thinner fuselage than it should be. The wing profile is also inaccurate in my opinion, particular the section from engine pods to fuselage. The engine pods are slightly overscale, perhaps by a millimetre, but given the plane is otherwise underscale it gives the effect of the engine pods looking just slightly lanky. I've never really liked the intake cones on this kit either, but each to his own I guess. Overall not too bad, but it is hard not to be subjective with the superior Revell kit on the market.
Overall Recommendation:
I cannot really recommend this kit when there is a far superior Revell kit on the market that beats it in just about every department, perhaps not price, but even then only a couple of dollars more. Then you could also go for the very comparable (other than price) Hasegawa kit if the Revell was unavailable as debate still rages over which is the better of those two - providing you get their new tooling offerings! The fit problems in this Smer kit were enough to turn me off from buying another one and the lack of painting information in the instruction sheet was also disappointing, along with the fact that Smer reissued their Me 262B kit with just a revised fuselage and left it up to the modeller to discover they must remove half of the cockpit tub. The finished model looks the goods, but it was needless filling and sanding work that had to get it this way. The only real positive thing about the kit apart from its low price and generally solid representation of the Me 262a was the additional etched set provided as the decals were also quite troublesome.
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