Just finished this one on Monday. It's the Academy 1/72 Me-163 Komet. I did it as a "quick build," trying to avoid adding much in the way of aftermarket or modifications. I did add some tape seatbelts, and the "porthole" bulkheads behind the cockpit (curiously missing from the kit) and made the pitot and dorsal antenna from wire.
Colors are Gunze Acrylics. I used their RLM 76 Lichtblau and 83 Dunklegrun straight from the bottle, but I didn't like their interpretation of RLM 81 Braunviolet (too green to my eye) so I made my own with a two-to-one mix of Olive Drab and Chocolate Brown. I couldn't find any two references that agreed on camouflage patterns, and no two Komets appear to have been painted alike anyway, so I just made up a generic splinter pattern for the wings, and did a heavy mottle on the fuselage and tail. After glosscoat and decals, I added a wash of artist's oils to the control surface hinge lines.
Despite the negative reputation of Academy decals (and my last disastrous experience with them) I bit the bullet and used the kit decals. The went on surprisingly well using Gunze "Mr. Mark Softer" and some Solvaset here and there..although I still had to run an X-acto along the panel lines of the larger decals to get them to conform. I had to source the tail swastikas from an old Superscale sheet.
The kit is very nice, and went together with almost no fuss. It also comes with the transporter vehicle, which I didn't bother to build. I may still add a bit of weathering, mainly paint chips with a silver Prismacolor pencil. (the wings were of course wood, so there wouldn't be much weathering there.)
Cheers!
Steve
