The 109, one of my favourite craft since a kid. Always felt it looked like a muscle car of the skies. From the Battle of Britain to the deserts of Africa and the frozen tundra of the Russian front. The Luftwaffes workhorse fighter. I've done my time on bad kits (Academy F-111), good kits (most of the rest),complicated kits (Warspite)and decided i wanted a nice detailed great kit. After much looking i found the Eduard kits were praised highly by all and the 109fs had rave reviews so i looked further and discovered the Royal Class. Photoetch included, beautifully detailed plastic, included brassin items, fantastic instruction booklet with a plethora of schemes, a beer glass and best of all, two 109s! One in stock (again luckily) so an instant purchase. Time to step up my game and see if i could do top of the line 1/48 kits justice. So, let's have a look inside and see what turned up...
First off, beautiful box for a model kit
Great looking detail
Eduard brassin and two lots of photo etch
Cartograf decals for 14 different 109s
14 different paint schemes in the glossy instruction booklet
Canopy mask set and of course the beer glass and coaster.
Quite the kit! After the FW190 v18 i decided to give Vallejo a crack again, the Metal colour was awesome so i figured the Model Air range had to be half decent as well. It would also make my job easier as the model air range covers all of teh RLM colours, no mixing colours like with Tamiya. Another product i wanted to try was Future, which is now known as Pledge. The only Pledge i could find at Woolworths was the incorrect brown coloured one, but, i stumbled on a modeller on youtube who uses a product called Long Life floor polish made by Pascoes and available at Bunnings. It isn't clear like the Pledge product, milky, but is thin like pledge and dries clear. This guy swears it is exactly the same, i had to give it a shot. Here's a link to the pdf safety data sheet and specifications if in case you're interested Pascoes Long Life
After much consideration of the instructions, variants and paint schemes i decided on Werner Molders F1 and the F4 Trop of Andreas. Molders because it is a classic 109 yellow nosed scheme and the trop picked by my youngest daughter as i was indecisive.