That didn?t go as planned? First she took a nose dive from 1.5 m straight into the floor, then I was prevented from modelling for three weeks. Eventually I?ve gotten around to mend the damages, and almost finish the rigging.
The last - but maybe most important - pieces to build are the reason why she is painted black in the first place: the landing lights. To help making landing after dark less perilous, the night fighters were supplied with various types of lights. This one seems to have had both Holt landing lights and Holt flares. The landing lights were very weak (due to weak batteries I suppose) so the main equipment were the flares which were hung under the wing tips. Some carried plenty: I?ve only seen Be12a and Be2e having one under each wing, so I went for that. As opposed to the battery-driven lamps, the flares burnt extremely bright and reflections on various parts of the planes tended to blind the pilots. The black paint was therefore not meant to hide the plane from the enemy, but prevent blinding reflections from the flares.
I took measures from a WNW Fe2b kit, which have both the lamps and flares. The landing lights are tiny, measuring 1.5mm in length with about 0.8mm diameter. These I turned from clear sprue, added a wire and painted first silver, then brass, leaving the ?lens? unpainted. They also had built-in port respectively starboard lights: these I took the sloppy approach and simulated with drops of paint.
The flares are more straightforward, and were put together from rod and tube:
Terribly out of focus, but here they are installed:
A couple of loose wires and missing pieces, but I?m finally getting there. Hopefully she will look less like Darth Vader up front with the propeller installed.
