PM 1/72 Ta 183 Huckebein

PM 1:72 FOCKE-WULF TA-183 HUCKEBEIN

Reviewer: Wayne Keegan (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted: 28 October 2003

Aircraft History:

In January 1945 an order was placed by the RLM for eight pre-production aircraft. It was to be powered by the Heinkel HeS 011 axial flow turbine. Armament was four 15, 20 or 30mm cannons situated in the nose and up to a 500kg bomb in a recessed bay. It is not known how far production had progressed by the end of the war and the drawings and parts are thought to have fallen into Russian hands. This may explain the resemblance of early MiG jets to the 183.

The Kit:

Inside the end opening box you find one relatively flash free sprue of light grey plastic with 22 parts and one clear sprue with the one piece canopy all contained in one sealed plastic bag. Also in the bag the instructions which are clear enough and the decal sheet which contains six crosses (swastikas had been there but had been cut off).

Construction:

As nearly always I started with the cockpit which is a floor, a very small seat, a joystick and foot pedals. These were painted and allowed to dry as were the side walls of the cockpit which have no detail whatsoever before being inserted into the fuselage. The main fuselage comes in two half and the locating pins had to be removed to get the two halves to mate up properly. Before assembling the fuselage the jet nozzle has to be fitted. This needed re-shaping to allow the fuselage to come together properly. I also added a little weight to the nose to make sure this didn’t end up a tail-sitter. Next the wings, these one piece affairs needed a lot of filling and sanding to get a smooth join, same goes for the tail. Then canopy was masked with Maskol which wasn’t easy as the detail is very faint. The canopy also needed extensive sanding to get it to fit snugly on the fuselage. I used PVA glue to secure it.

I decided to paint the kit now in the recommended RLM colours 76/81/82 before adding the undercarriage. The 76 light gray seems a little to light to me but that’s what the instructions say to use. Once the paint had dried it was time for the undercarriage to be fitted. After everything was fitted and allowed to dry I applied a few thin coats of Johnsons Kleer/Future to stop any silvering of the decals. The decals supplied were rather thick but went on easy enough. I added a couple of swastikas from an old Revell He 152 and that about finished it apart from the last coating of Kleer to seal the decals.

Colour Scheme:

I used the colours that were recommended on the instruction sheet, these were RLM 76 (light grey) on the underside and as a base colour for the rest of the plane. Upper wing surfaces were then marked out with a splinter camouflage of RLM 82 (dark green) over the light grey. Finally the upper part of the fuselage and the tail were mottled with RLM 81 (brown-violet).

Decals:

As the supplied decals were sparse to say the least I went to the spares box for a couple of swastikas and some other markings.

Overall Recommendation:

I did this kit strictly OOB (out of the box) apart for the extra decals and as you can see even though doesn’t have many parts not everything was as straight forward as it should be but what do you want from a kit that cost me Ł2 sterling.

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