Initial assessment
“We should have had it by now Geoff…”: Les says over a cup of coffee this morning “don’t worry, I have a sneaky feeling I’ll get a knock on the door today or some time very soon and it’ll be here” I say, “blimey, it’s big though” says Les and on we go and on that note, I’ll move on. Suffice to say, sure enough, no sooner had Les departed than a bang, bang, bang, and a nice courier guy hands me two packages from Revell and yes, you guessed it, one contains the 1:32nd Heinkel He 111 P-1.
The box is restrained in size – fat rather that big but the contents are significant, very significant, because I am holding a 1:32nd scale He 111 in my hands – who’d have thought it? I am rapidly coming to the view that nothing is impossible these days – someone, somewhere just might produce one. Les also mentioned that Hannants are listing new 1:32 scale SEPECAT Jaguar decals, so maybe that rumoured Trumpeter release is nearer to reality than I thought – oh yes, that’ll be in SMN first too.
Sprues and more sprues
The box is pretty packed with these, light grey sprue frames and the best thing to do is show them to you here:
So, what do you think? Well, overall I’m pretty impressed with what’s inside. The cockpit looks to be very well appointed which is just as well because the He 111 has a greenhouse for a cockpit and you’ll be able to see most of it.
Highlights at a glance:
- Subject choice – very welcome
- Panel line detail – sharp, recessed and no too deep in this scale
- Cockpit detail and detail tooling of fittings
- MG-15s finely tooled
- Raised detail on side instrument panels with decals for main panels. I think the latter will work very well – we’ll see in the build stage
- 8-bomb vertical bomb rack applicable to the P-2 (as mentioned in Revell’s instruction sheet) we will fit this, so you can see how it all works (even if this feature wasn’t applicable to the P-1 – still checking our references to confirm)
- Undercarriage looks accurate and subtle, like the original
- Positionable flaps, tailplane elevators and rudder
- Clarity of clear glazed parts
- Decal options – plenty of variety, given the kit is a P-1 variant.
Things to watch and take extra care with:
- Some prominent ejection pin marks on the insides of the fuselage halves and may prove difficult to remove without causing damage. Some may be hidden reducing the problem, so dry fitting may help find out the ones that need attention
- Some sink-marks at the root of the propeller blades – easy to fill, but a bit of a chore
- Multi-part canopy may be tricky to assemble so take care with this
- Tyres aren’t bulged – given this is a big 1:32 scale kit, I think that these should have been provided
- Seat harness is poor and should be replaced. I won’t get caught twice with this one as I did with the Revell 1:32 Arado; that has a moulded seat belt that isn’t realistic but here it’s very basic, just two vague moulded lines on the seat face. Easily resolved though with scratched items or some from Eduard – especially their pre-painted ones will do the trick
- Split exhaust stacks – they will need to be glued together and care will be needed during clean up but they will assemble hollow and that’s great
- Decals – plenty of carrier film on show, although they are thin and that’s good. Trimming it away will be essential and you may want to go the Dave C. way and try and secure some Montex paint masks so you can spray most of the markings. This could be a worthwhile investment as the kit is very reasonably priced.