Matchbox 1/72 Messerschmitt Me110D

Most of the panel line rescribing has been completed with only the fuselage to do so I decided to block in the wheel wells as they are just empty holes in the wings;

I did this with 0.20thou plastic sheet, using downloaded instructions from an Eduard Me110 as a guide.

Because of the way the undercarriage legs fit into the engine nacelles it would have been impossible to fit bulkheads to the front of the wells. In the end I modified the undercarriage legs to fit into slots cut into the bulkheads;

The left leg before modification

The legs fit into the slots as shown but I’ll need to be careful to get both lined up during the final assembly.

With the main gear bays done and before gluing the wing halves together, I cut out the leading edge slats as on the real aircraft they are pushed out by springs until the aircraft took off and reached the required air speed, after which the slats would retract;

The wings were glued together and put aside to set so I made a start on the cockpit;

As you can see the kit supplied cockpit is basic to say the very least and although I said in an earlier post I was going to leave it as is, I decided to make at least a more representative cockpit just using plastic sheet (and the etch set I ordered when it turns up).

The cockpit will be basically a rectangular box that can be fitted after painting;

The bulkhead behind the pilots seat will have square blocks glued on to represent the radios and other ‘black boxes’ found on it. The kit seats will be modified to better represent the actual items too.

That’s where I’m up to for now as it all needs to set before I do anything else and it’s getting late here in the UK. I guess it seems silly to some the amount of work I’m doing to this model, especially when there are faaaar superior kits available however it demonstrates the sort of stuff I did back in the 1980’s (along with other modellers) if I wanted to improve the look of a model. Back then of course there was no aftermarket stuff such as resin or etch so scratchbuilding was the only option. I spent many a happy hour making instrument panels from plastic sheet using drills to make the bezels then cutting them out into tiny squares and in fact I’m going to have to still do it for a planned build of an Academy 1/72 F-15D as there is no aftermarket resin cockpit available for that particular kit.

It’s great to be a modeller in these times as the quality of kits and the amount of aftermarket available is staggering, however it’s good to exercise my scratchbuilding from time to time and probably why these ancient kits have such an appeal. Also as proved with the 1/72 Dornier 28D, some of these ancient kits are the only ones ever kitted of a particular type so you have no choice other than to make parts from scratch.