ZM He219

[DocRob]

7 hours ago, BlrwestSiR said:

For some reason, the cover plate won't fit. It fits perfectly without the weight in place. I thought it might be the placement guides on the bottom but nope, the weight itself is too tall.

Same here, I checked mine. The weight does not fit inside the alignment tabs, that's what causes the gap. I will either cut away the alignment angels, or file away some material of the corners of the weight and hope that these grams don't make it a tailsitter.

Cheers Rob

[BlrwestSiR]

So I'm not the only one. 

Thankfully there's an easy fix so I'll cover that once I get there. I'm leaving it out for the moment so the fuselage is a bit easier to handle. 

[Spitfire]

This really is looking great, I love the detailing in it, hopefully ZM are on the ball as far as weight is concerned, my Revell kit called for 70g in the fuselage and 25g in each nacelle, so I added 80g in the fuselage and 30g in each nacelle and I ended up with a tail sitter. So I added 38g in the nose wheel bay and that just about cured it.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[BlrwestSiR]

Dennis, I weighed the cast weight that ZM gives you. 

Hopefully with it just behind the cockpit, it'll be enough to keep the model from being a tail sitter.

[harv]

What a sweet looking build Carl !!...harv 

[Wumm]

Agreed Harv...

You're doing stellar work Carl, despite these fit issues. It definitely looks like the added ZM weapons tray details are overscale when compared to the appearance in the manual.

But it would still be a shame to leave them out. Tough call.

S

[[CAT]CplSlade]

Carl,

I was talking to Steve Jobs ghost via my in-house medium and he said to tell you you're holding the weight wrong. Try holding it at arm's length, and then tilt it until the top of the weight appears to go below the sides of the holder, and THEN put the top on.

[BlrwestSiR]

Ok, I found a somewhat simple fix for the slightly too tall counter weight. 

Shave the inside of part F42 that sits directly below the forward tank. It's easiest to do this before you install it. 

Otherwise just use a scraper and scrape the inside edges down.

 

Remove  the fit tabs and sand flat the bottom of the tank cover. 

I then added some appropriate thickness shins to either end of the tank to hold it in place between the two bulkheads.

Test fit to make sure you have enough clearance so that the tank cover fits correctly along with the upper panels. 

With the tank cover in place, you won't see the gap around the top lip of it and the tank. From below, the spaces between the tank and the bulkheads and fuselage sides are again too thin  and dark to see anything. The shims keep the tanks from moving back and forth and let you glue it into position without the tank cover. 

The upper spine should now fit correctly without any gaps. 

Hope that makes sense. 

Carl

[Wumm]

I was also thinking,

You may need to do the same to the underside of part 42, if this is possibly the reason the new gun barrel tubes are forcing a gap in that area of the underside weapons tray.

S

[BlrwestSiR]

11 minutes ago, Wumm said:

I was also thinking,

You may need to do the same to the underside of part 42, if this is possibly the reason the new gun barrel tubes are forcing a gap in that area of the underside weapons tray.

S

I thought the same thing and gave it a quick sanding along the underside. It helped a bit at the rear but not so much at the front.

I took a closer look at the blast tubes and they're interfering at the front edge against the fuselage itself. I'm going to leave it for the moment as it's right where the front fuselage joins to the rear. Once I have the fuselage together I'll see what tweaking is needed. 

[Bomber_County]

Stunning Carl, I have an admission.........I started my ZM ‘stang..........

[GazzaS]

Great work, Carl!

[Wumm]

5 hours ago, BlrwestSiR said:

I took a closer look at the blast tubes and they're interfering at the front edge against the fuselage itself. I'm going to leave it for the moment as it's right where the front fuselage joins to the rear. Once I have the fuselage together I'll see what tweaking is needed. 

Here's hoping that the tubes at least line up with the openings at the front, this will make things a whole lot easier.

Some more tid-bits from the Schußwaffenanlage Handbuch should you wish to open things up a little...

Port rear weapons bay:

And the same without MG151 installed:

Good luck!

[BlrwestSiR]

9 minutes ago, Wumm said:

Here's hoping that the tubes at least line up with the openings at the front, this will make things a whole lot easier.

Thankfully they do line up. They were a real pain to install as these are the replacement brass ones. 

This is the stock part with the replacement brass tubes.

 

Partway through their installation.

Honestly, the biggest difference is that the inner pair of tubes are full length in the brass versus the stock part which is only partially moulded. Otherwise it probably isn't worth the hassle. 

[BlrwestSiR]

A small update today. With the fit of the fuselage fuel tanks resolved, I gave them a coat of paint. 

Using some of the images in the Kagero books, I decided to paint the tanks in a dark yellow and then all the various lines in semi gloss black. 

I needed a bit of touch up back and forth on the colours 

I then attached them to the lower tanks and have them a wash of Gunze Ground Brown wash. 

Next up I finally closed up the front fuselage.

To make sure I had the right spacing at the front, I attached the forward bulkhead and placed the nose on. The nose is still removable at this point. 

[BlrwestSiR]

After about a half hour, I decided to see how the fit of the front section was. I'm glad I checked as somehow, it no longer fit to the rear section as cleanly. So I decided to carefully (ok, not really) pry apart the front fuselage and try a different approach. 

This time I glued the interior section to the rear fuselage. 

I then added the outer halves and adjusted the fit as I went. 

Some tape and clamps to keep things where they're supposed to be and hopefully this time it'll work. 

[Spitfire]

Some great detail painting going on here, looks superb. Solving the fit problem must have been a bit fraught after all that work but it looks like you have it well in hand.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[DocRob]

Nice and timely save with the fuselage. The details like Spitfire mentioned look great, BUT, will you see them when finished. Since the TA-152 build, I'm a little sensitive to the ZM approach of showing so much of the innards and structures of the plane. On one hand you get some nice detail, but if you would go an open up approach for a maintenance scene, you will have some areas with heavily simplified detail, where you have to put some work in. The downside is a ton of panels to align, multiple part fuselages, which always are a bit hard to assemble flush and gapless. Good that you mastered this critical step with your build.

Cheers Rob

[BlrwestSiR]

4 hours ago, Spitfire said:

Some great detail painting going on here, looks superb. Solving the fit problem must have been a bit fraught after all that work but it looks like you have it well in hand.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

Thanks Dennis! 

2 hours ago, DocRob said:

Nice and timely save with the fuselage. The details like Spitfire mentioned look great, BUT, will you see them when finished. Since the TA-152 build, I'm a little sensitive to the ZM approach of showing so much of the innards and structures of the plane. On one hand you get some nice detail, but if you would go an open up approach for a maintenance scene, you will have some areas with heavily simplified detail, where you have to put some work in. The downside is a ton of panels to align, multiple part fuselages, which always are a bit hard to assemble flush and gapless. Good that you mastered this critical step with your build.

Cheers Rob

Thanks Rob! Much of the internal detail doesn't get seen unless you do a maintenance scene I suspect. So I've gone through the build to see what does need to be added or what can be viewed after completion. This was the same approach I took with my ZM Skyraider. I ended up leaving out a lot of the internal detail on that one.

For the fuselage tanks, the top panel fits well enough that I can get away with  not gluing it in place so that the details will still be accessible. 

Here's the fuselage as of this morning:

With the panels in place. 

The last second intervention worked. There's only a small seam on either side that's no wider than the panel lines.  The only one that needs any filler is on the underside and that gets covered by the ventral gun pack. 

[Lothar]

I love what you're doing with this kit, that goes for painting, problem solving etc., etc. In the end you'll have an eyecatcher in either your display case or on any model show table. A joy to follow 

Lothar

[BlrwestSiR]

Thanks Lothar! It's been a challenge but I'm still enjoying it. 

[Bomber_County]

Just getting into the ZM P51, I now know what you mean about what do leave out......I’m doing one buttoned up and one panels of etc........there is so to pack in.......yummy.....

[BlrwestSiR]

On 6/3/2020 at 8:50 AM, Bomber_County said:

Just getting into the ZM P51, I now know what you mean about what do leave out......I’m doing one buttoned up and one panels of etc........there is so to pack in.......yummy.....

Sometimes it is tough deciding on what to do. 

Same with the Tamiya Mossie. I usually build my planes closed up but there's so much nice detail in the kit I decided to get a second one. This way I can do one with some panels open/left off.  

[BlrwestSiR]

A smidge of progress and a small faux pas. 

I was cleaning out my airbrush when I tipped over my bottle of Gunze tool cleaner. Well, that stuff has acetone  in it and it started dripping onto the fuselage. 

Thankfully I was able to wipe it off fairly quickly. It still ate some of the plastic though. It wasn't too bad so I was able to sand it back to smooth. 

I then assembled the tailcone and the anntena inside it.

I had to use a temporary spreader bar to get the right width when I glued it to the fuselage. 

Once that's dry, I'll keep at it. 

Carl

[[CAT]CplSlade]

That could have been so much worse. Lucky you.