Me 262 HGIII WIP

Decided to start a new project as a quicky to have for the IPMS San Diego contest in June. Picked this up last year and it is a surprisingly simple build so I believe I will be able to get it done in the time frame. 

So the first thing required is building up the innards and adding some weight to the nose. 

Next I did some work on the cockpit, including parts not pictured. I also did some dry brushing on the cockpit floor and side was. Will do some more work tomorrow. 

Today's progress on the 262. Got more of the cockpit details painted and got most of the instrument panel done. 

 

More work on the 262 cockpit. Finished the instrument panel, doing the gauges in clear uv resin. 

Back to work on the 262. Got the main and nose gear bays painted, this was I can start closing the fuselage up. 

I then started to get the cockpit assembled. 

I also painted the frame area around the cockpit and inner side walls. 

Lastly I got the seat installed in the cockpit. 

Made some decent progress on the 262 since the last update. First off I have the fuselage now buttoned up and fully assembled. 

 

Next I got the landing gear assembled and the base paint applied. 

The wheel are also now assembled and the hubs painted. 

After that the gear doors are all painted and ready for additional detail work.  

Lastly I got the canopy masked off and ready to paint. 

More progress, now getting paint on plastic. Got the nose followed by the underside painted first. Next the upper surface received a base of RML 70. I then decided to try something a little different in how I mask the camouflage off. 

Normally I will use sticky tack and rough out the shape and press it down. However this can be very imprecise and can leave residue that can be time consuming to get up. So for this I decided to try blocking it out with Tamiya curve tape and fill in the block with regular Tamiya tape. 

Looking at the results in the third picture I think I am likeing this method better. Still have a few spots that need to get touched up, but am happy with the results.  

Been a little bit but have made significant progress on the 262. So first up I gloss coated the kit and have the decals applied. This went very quick as there were not many decals. 

Next was applying the pin wash. I went with a more minimal application as to show a cleaner bird that did not have significant buildup of grime. Majority of the wash was applied to the landing gear, gear doors, and between control surfaces. 

Last shot is all the pieces now flat coated. I am going to do a little more weathering at this stage using some of Tamiya's weathering sets (the ones that look like makeup). Figured this would be a good candidate to try them out on.

Should have this one done in the next week or two in time for IPMS San Diego's annual contest.