SPA Modeler

Hasegawa,s boxing of ICM's Do215-B is making it's way to the market. Since I have not seen the ICM kit I really can not make a comparison. I don't know if Hasegawa uses their plastic for their production run or what bit the plastic id a more of a greenish gray and a bit dark. The plastic right out of the box is all bagged in one bag with fold out instructions and a nice set of Hasegawa decals included in the kit.the decals that are the instrument panel gauges responded very well to Humbrol's decal fix and settled right down with out too much fuss.

As far as the kit goes it is sort of the limited run type with some improvements of locating pins where they are needed most.
I spent some time putting the side panels in the left fuselage side. Recessed square dimples allow for a more secure placement of the parts, coupled with the Hasegawa style of instructions assembly is straightforward and not confusing.





I have yet to install the pilots seat and IP but that will happen when I tackle the right side of the fuselage. There are a lot more features in the assembly of the fuselage which I'll cover in a later post.

cheers.

Following!

- Kari

Interesting how those kits are making their way around the globe. First released by ICM in 2014, then a year later by Revell of Germany for the broad European market an now by Hasegawa for the Asian.

Heard nothing bad about it, so have fun!

In the course of building the cockpit I started to have a bit of a problem trying too get the Pilots seat to fit correctly. I haphazar4dly got it to stick where it is supposed to be and I laid it aside only to find out later that it had a mind of its own and wanted to lean against the pit side. All I can say is that the pit is fairly fiddly.



Ill get to massaging that part to move back into place later. I did get the side walls of the starboard pit to fit up well. added a bit of color and installed that seat.



I did manage to get the fuse together after all of this. The center section contains one bulkhead and three pieces of frame work that supports either a set of bombs or a couple of fuel tanks, the latter is used to display the B-4 photo recon version
of this plane.

The frame work can be seen here on the left side of the fuselage while a glazed port for a camera system which the kit doesn't contain.



A downward facing camera port is also installed in the nose for the P/R version also.



I apologize for the out of focus photo but now you can see the bomb bay framing.



The wing assembly went together with out much hassle. It has a single piece top half



And a two piece lower half with the oil coolers on each one.



Now the fit of wing to fuselage is another issue. Try as I might I just couldn't get it to fit properly





Gaps on the underside as well as the top.





Studying this further showed that the bomb bay frame work to be a bit high and requires some sanding to get them to fit properly which I have done and is now clamped up to allow the glue to dry. I am sure that somebody with more experience in modeling would be able to come up with a better solution than I did.

More later.
Cheers, Paul

Paul, good to see you doing this Dornier! I like your picture-heavy approach here, for I could imagine getting Revell´s night fighter edition of this kit myself.

On the gaps between fuselage and wings: would it be possible to use some sprue parts to widen the fuselage, this way closing the gaps?

Following closely!

Looking good so far..