Hobbyboss Komet with Academy cockpit 1/72

[BorgR3mc0]

Most of my builds are in the painting phase so I started another one.
A Komet by Hobbyboss from their Easykit line. Some of these Easykits are great (like the MiG-3) but this one is lacking. The cockpit is extremely shallow and undersized. Fortunately I had a spare Academy single seater cockpit at hand and decided to graft it on the HB kit.

As a side note: a lot of reviews state the HB kit is based on the Academy kit. But I do not think this is the case. All sorts of panel lines and shapes are subtly different.






I added some Eduard PE seat belts.




Now to choose a colour scheme:

[Medicman71]

The very bottom one.

[BlackSheep214]

Red & white, red, or the yeller one.

[BorgR3mc0]

Red & white, red, or the yeller one.

Well, this will not be the first Komet I build. It is one of the collections I am building. So the red en orange ones are already build:




The red and white is a possibility. It is a French Komet, used by a civil institution for rocket research.

[mustang1989]

Nice! I'm always down for a Komet build! That fourth one down looks fantastic!!

[BorgR3mc0]

Here is the Komet with the cockpit installed. I have added some Eduard PE German seatbelts.



The Hobbyboss kit is not that good. Some claim it is an copy of the Academy kit but this is definitely not true. A few examples: the airintake on the tail are missing, the rudder hinge is simplified and the canopy has almost no detail. A bit of a pity because other Hobbyboss Easykits are quite good: an example being the MiG-3.

The tail has no aerodynamic profile. This pic show how square it is:




Here it is after a few swipes with a sanding stick and sandpaper (1200 imperial grit) to polish.

[Stuart]

Nice recovery with that tail - very strange that they'd leave it square!

the HB Easy build mig-15 is also a very nice kit.

[BorgR3mc0]

Nice recovery with that tail - very strange that they'd leave it square!

the HB Easy build mig-15 is also a very nice kit.

Sounds like their Russian aircraft are better then their western aircraft. I hear very nasty things about HB Easykit Spitfire's and Typhoon's.

[Stuart]

I've not seen a build of an HB Tiffie or Spitfire so I can't comment - I know a guy who builds a lot of their kits and has a lot of good stuff to say about them - mind you, the only western aircraft I think he's built is a P-40 so you may well be right.

[BorgR3mc0]

I did some more work on the master for my new canopy. And after several tries vacuformed a new one.



Is it perfect? No, because I use a male mold based on the original canopy it is slightly oversized. But with some fiddling a good fit can be achieved.






And the canopy is clear (but not as smooth as a professional canopy).



I masked it but made a mistake, there should be a curve. I will fix that later.