Kurt Tank’s design team late in the war was striving to design aircraft to rival rumored Allied jet fighters, like the Gloster Meteor. Unfortunately for the Reich, fuel shortages and the end of the war prevented most of the fighters designed after the Me-262 from ever seeing combat. One of these was the TA 183 “Huckebein”. The Americans captured data and plans for the fighter from the Messerschmitt plants- and these evolved into designs of the swept-wing FJ-2/3/4 Fury and the Air Force version- the F-86 Sabre. The Soviet spoils of design plans led to their MiG-15.
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Tamiya‘s beautiful Bf-109G-6 is just a fun build. What it does lack is the seatbelts. Tamiya provides you with a decal to replicate the seatbelts and shoulder harnesses. This is a major letdown for me as the belts are quite prominent in the small cockpit.
Packaged in a self-resealing package that is typical for Eduard smaller photo etch is one fret of pre-painted photo etch. The fret includes the seatbelts and shoulder harnesses. They are painted properly with some shading around the buckles. It is very convincing and looks great.
I noticed that this set is slightly different from the one designed for the Eduard kit so it is definitely designed for the Tamiya kit. You can tell by the mount for the shoulder harness which will key into the kit attachment point. The set designed for the Eduard kit has the attachment point as well.
Eduard has designed photo etch and resin sets for the Tamiya Bf-109G-6. One thing that I would have changed on my Tamiya Bf-109G-6 is the instrument panel. I would have liked to have a pre-painted one instead of the decal over the kit instrument panel. Well Eduard must have thought so too because they’ve designed a set just for it.
The Zoom set is typical of the series, packaged in a resealable package and protected by thin card stock. The set contains a single pre-painted fret. The primary colored part is the instrument panel. But the set doesn’t stop there. There are also rudder pedals, ignition harnesses and exhaust deflectors. Some other things included such items like the chain and lifting lugs for the engine. There is also stuff to dress up the side wall detail, some of which requires sanding off the detail, like the instrument panel.
The Tamiya Bf-109G-6 kit comes with masks inside the kit. I used them on my build but discovered a few things. The first thing that I noticed was that I needed to cut them out of the sheet. This was a pain. I would rather have my masks pre-cut. I did cut mine correctly, but it took some time.
The other thing that I noticed was that the Tamiya masks while nice just didn’t have the amount of stickiness that would allow them to hold onto the curves. They just wanted to straighten out and this allowed paint to creep under the masks.
The Tamiya Bf-109G-6 is a phenomenal kit. That said it could use a little upgrading here and there. One of those things is with the guns on the closed cowling option. The kit guns are okay but they lack some detail. The kit ones lack detail due to the limitations of injection plastic.
Eduard has made some beautifully flawless light grey resin replacement ones. Packaged in the normal blister pack packaging are two gun barrels. The instruction sheet is a small double sided sheet that explains what has to be done. Simple and easy. These two resin pieces have the appropriate cooling vents over the barrel and the proper shape to the muzzle and flash suppressor. They are small.
These are near drop in replacements for the kit parts. You will need to cut off the mold plug at the end and drill the flash suppressor out slightly.
I haven’t checked these out in my Eduard kits but I suspect that they will fit the Eduard kits as well.