„Volksjäger“ (people fighter) Heinkel He 162 in 1:32 scale

[snokri]

Hi folks,
this is my first thread in “ww2Aircraft.net” being a new bee here. Ilive in Saxonia Germany near the town of Dresden.
My first interest is in “As-Ifs“ of 1946- in 1:72 scale the” secret weapons” on the drawing. boards of the German aircraft designers. Just for a break I decided to do an airplane which left the drawing board and got into the air. The He 162 is well documented and there is a reasonable kit in 1:32 scale large enough to do some detailing.. Not long ago a restoration project of the He 162 was finished in France which is well documented So my choice fell on this Revell kit
The Revell kit is of acceptable quality at a fair price and leaves ample place for detailing. There are many detailing sets in resin and PE for the Heinkel. But except for some harness buckles I will try to do the missing details by scratching That is I hope so.

But let’s start now.

Pilots live insurance: The ejection seat:

Because the seat will be presented outside the airplane I wanted to do it correct. In fact I used only the seat bowl of the kit the rest of the seat is part of the kits bulkhead and was discarded-There were minor corrections to this seat bowl. The handgrip holes have rounded and not square corners as in the kit. The sides are dented not straight the footrests are to short and were replaced by strips and rods and last but not least I grinded out the seatbelts. The rest of the seat specially the release mechanism and the bulkhead are constructed of plastic sheet, strips, rods and soldering wire.
The seat can be slid in the guide rails of the bulkhead.



The backside of the seat with the ejection mechanism:



Seat fixed to the bukhead:

[fam43]

Hi Bernd,
I!m glad you show up in this forum. Wellcome!

[Airframes]

Hello and welcome from England, Bernd. Very nice work so far, looking forward to watching the build progress.

[hawkeye2an]

Welcome. Looking good.

[Crimea_River]

Very impressive work so far Bernd. I'll be watching this build with interest. Welcome to the forum.

[snokri]

Hello,

thank you very much for the friendly greetings.

Thank you for the nice comments.

Greetings Bernd

[Lucky13]

Beautiful work Bernd!

[Wayne Little]

G'day Bernd welcome aboard, look forward to your build!

[Maximowitz]

Great start Bernd, and welcome!

[snokri]

Once again, many thanks.

I already feel very well here.

[stona]

Nice work Bernd,it looks very good. Not one of my favourite aircraft but a very interesting subject.
By the way,what is the bike in your avatar?
Cheers
Steve

[snokri]

A little break:
To engrave rivets I made my own punch from a hollow needle I use it by light pushing and turning.



Back to the ejection release handle placed on a one Cent Euro coin.



Head and back cushions are plastic sheet carved with a scapula. The real things were covered with leather or canvas as the war situation allowed. The French ones are covered with black imitation leather. Didn’t like this and decided to imitate brown leather. Revell 85 was used as ground and followed by different coats of pastels. I remembered the look of the old bag of my grandpa. Future sealed the colors. Afterwards I sanded them with 1200 grade sandpaper and polished it with a paper towel till I got different shades of shining.

[Wurger]

[snokri]

Front view of the seat:

After a primer coat with a light gray enamel second came a coat with RLM 66. A mix of RLM 66 and 75 was sprayed on the raised parts. This mix was lightened again with 76 and sprayed lightly over the flat parts.
I did this to get some texture on the parts and by the way I did justice to the scale effect too. Next I sealed it with Future and did some drybrushing on the edges. The same procedure was used on the bulkhead and the sidewalls. Later I will come back to these parts again. By the way I use an Aztek for all my spraywork.

[snokri]

Nice work Bernd,it looks very good. Not one of my favourite aircraft but a very interesting subject.
By the way,what is the bike in your avatar?
Cheers
Steve

Many thanks.

The Bike is an old-timer from Eastern Germany from 1969.
A MZ ETS 250. I have restored this some years ago myself.