mustang1989

Thanks Dave! Mine too....surprised I haven't built any more of these. 'Preciate that Carlos! It was a balancing act for sure. Thank you Bill. Wow! I may have to check out YOUR builds of all those!! Thanks Mark!! I thought that was interesting about Adam's take at first but I know he's glad he did it Charlie's way. That was for sure an amazing book!!!

I've been wanting to build this aircraft for a very long time and have had two in my stash. I really wished I wouldn't have gotten rid of my Dragon Me-262A-1a Nachtjager version but this Tamiya A-1 kit was a good kit to build. I had set out to build Franz Stigler's plane from JV-44 late in the war. I read Adam Makos' book , A Higher Call several years ago and he was one of the main people that the story centered around. Long story short....he was going to shoot down a severely shot up B-17 and decided to lead them out of Germany instead. Afterwards he was assigned to JV-44 (pretty much Germany's last remaining fully operational air defense unit which was made up of the very best remaining fighter pilots) where he flew this aircraft. If you haven't read this book I won't give anything away but I'll just say that is a very powerful read. The kit is one that has been around for a while from Tamiya: There are a couple of schemes that could've been his bird but this is the one here that I went with as it just looks so dang cool.... I used Vallejo acrylics to replicate the paint and went with Eagle Cals for 95% of the markings and Peddinghaus for the #3 numerals on the side. Note.....never use the Peddinhaus offerings. Other than the #3 the stencils and other markings were just way out of scale. I had some trouble with the windscreen ended up removing it, sanding the fuselage and windscreen joints to get a better fit but that was about the only problem I had out of this awesome kit. Anyhow....after 6+ months...here is the completed build:

Good lookin' Havoc Dave!! I agree with you on the box art camo pattern. That'd leave me dizzy trying to keep up with painting something like that.

Very good work on these Gil!!!

Good lookin' lil' build you've got yourself there. Love the old ones still.

Lookin' good so far Mark. These kits build up great!!

Got any pics Mark? Glad you're back at it.

Exceptional build Carlos!!! Way to go with bringing an old kit up to snuff bud.

VERY nice work!! Got any more pictures of this?

Un................believable!!!

Coverage looks good on both and these builds are looking great so far Gil. Nicely done man.

Thanks Mark. 'Preciate you stoppin' in buddy! Thank you for your comments as well Mark. There were two firsts with this car. When I was 14 it was the best gloss I'd turned out to date. And then again some 31 years later it was again....the best gloss I'd ever achieved on a car. I stripped the original gloss and decals from the body and obtained a new set of cals and glossed over the molded body color for the second time around. Hell must've froze over or something because the gloss just went on......and that was it. It was perfect....no dust....no wet sanding and no polish. It just wound up as you see here. I chased that same result for 3 more years but never got the same results again without wet sanding or polishing. Just my lucky gloss day on that day I guess. lol

Thought I'd bump this one back up to the top for some of the newer viewers. This is my favorite all time auto build largely because it's one of my surviving original builds that I "upgraded".

LOL! 'fraid not Mark. It aint all that hard to get finishes like this once you get a method that works for you out bud. After my Challenger build I spent the better part of 3 years chasing that same finish that I got by accident.

You've got your hands full with filling those gaps in but it's still doable if you take your time. I usually use super glue for filler but only let it cure out for one day before attempting to sand or sculpt it with sanding sticks, files or the x-acto. Looking forward to this build.