Airfix Henschel Hs123 1:72 Scale

Certainly been a around a few years this one, though as far as I am aware other kits of the Hs123 in this scale are few and far between, on first inspection flash and sink marks are present but its to be expected with the age of the moulds, just means time has to be spent cleaning up the parts before anything can be started. In all 37 injection moulded parts make up this kit with a single clear park for the windscreen, this isn’t the best of clear parts I’ve seen but will do.
Once parts are cleaned up construction can begin after I painted the cockpit area and seat Humbrol 31 there is no other cockpit detail thought to be fair once the fuselage halves are together you can’t see inside the cockpit very well I added a seat cushion made out of bluetack which was painted and a black wash applied.
On to the engine assembly, once the ample flash has been removed and the parts painted silver and washed with citadel ink it looks the part. The front end fits onto the main fuselage with no problems the fuselage halves cause no problems when joined and only a small amount of filler is needed on the underside join and where the two lower wings meet the fuselage. There is a lot of raised detail on the fuselage sides and tail which didn’t look right to me and certainly didn’t show in any pictures I observed off the real thing so a took time to sand all this detail off was worth the effort I think. At this stage the spats and wheels were added, the upperwing which is all one part
Is glued to the struts and this whole assembly left to one side as I knew it would be easier to paint both this and the rest of the airframe with it removed and add it to the rest of the plane later on, also I had already decided to apply markings to represent the Condor legion which would require a certain amount of masking! Another reason for leaving the upperwing off at this point.
There is another colour option of a machine in Luftwaffe markings, this is also a splinter type markings so your going to have to use plenty of tamiya masking tape!
Before painting I applied an undercoat, for this I used Halfords own brand Grey Acrylic Primer, If you haven’t used any of the Halfords car sprays do so! It sprays on easily and gives a good even coverage, dries quickly too allowing you to crack on with the job in hand and another plus, its cheaper the undercoats offered by certain modelling brands!
Undersides were hand painted with Humbrol 65, and the uppersurfaces were again hand painted with Humbrol 87. Next came several sessions of masking the complicated stright edge/splinter camouflage scheme Humbrol 31 and 98 been used to complete the rest of the scheme and tips to the upperwings and rudder were painted white.
Now I’m not the best when it comes to making having only just got back into modelling but my patience paid off and I was happy with the end result. Once all paint was dry I glued the upperwing in place, before applying decals the whole model was given a coat of Johnson’s Klear floor polish which gives a good glossy surface for the decals to adhere too. Unfortunately the airfix decals were poor and several broke up very easily once in water, in the end I had to carefully touch up the black strips on the rudder and the serial numbers on the fuselage sides with black paint, but you can’t tell, no honestly you can’t!
Now onto weathering the airframe, I had painted the engine cowling matt aluminium earlier on during construction so once the top coat of camouflage had been applied and left to dry I stuck celotape on to the cowling then ripped it off exposing the aluminium paint underneath in an attempt to represent chips in the paint this worked well I also decided to add a few chips with a brush again using aluminium paint and further chips were applied with an artists silver pencil basically I was trying out different methods all of which I think worked well. Exhaust streaking round the engine was represented by black pastel applying using an small make up applicator (bought in pack from Superdrug!)
Finally the whole model was given a coat of Humbrol satin varnish spray and hey presto done.
Yes I’m sure there are a few better-moulded kits around but the Airfix kit is readily available having been recently reissued at the very good price of £3.99, despite the poor decals I can defiantly recommend this kit which with a bit of effort can produce a decent looking model.