Clayton presents his excellent model of Miniart's "Kolibri" in 35th scale today. We wanted to show you more of these built, as we think that it has an interesting cross-over potential between aviation, naval and army types. See what Clayton thought of the model and how he painted & weathered the kit in his build guide...
Build Guide: Flettner Fl 282 Kolibri
From MiniArt Models
Series: Aircraft Miniatures
Box size: 345 x 240 x 60мм
Price - ¥4,800/ US$47/ £32/ €38 from Hobbylink Japan
At the risk of covering old ground, today I present you the slightly left of centre release from Miniart, The Kolibri or Hummingbird.
The scheme that I will be building for you in today's guide...
I guess our hobby will reach a point where it starts running out of subjects to produce, or at least subjects that would be commercially viable. Maybe in some ways, we are already at that point and we see model companies re-boxing, re-releasing and rehashing models we have seen for the past 20 years. Please don’t think I am complaining, the more choice the better as far as I am concerned, but there are only so many King Tigers one-man can bare. So, when I saw this new line from Miniart it came as a real breath of fresh air.
As far as I am aware, and I am prepared to stand corrected, the Kolibri hasn’t been released previously in 1/35 scale or at least not by a mainstream manufacturer. This is the first release by Miniart in their new Aircraft Miniatures Series, with the view to expand the line. Miniart have been long known for their range of armoured vehicle and figure sets, so the move into airborne craft is certainly a side step for them. It is also worth noting that the 1/35th scale plays right in to the armour builders’ hands rather than the traditional scale of the aircraft builder of 1/32nd.
Subscribers of The Modelling News will have already been treated to the visual feast that was Andy Moores’ rendition of this model. Andy’s work always astounds me, and there is always a certain amount of trepidation I feel when I am asked to build the same kit. That has probably led to me dragging the chain on this build a little, but with that said, this is how I went about building and painting my Kolibri.
There really isn’t a lot of building in the bones of this model. The rear section, tail and the mid-section of the frame all came together well. There was a small amount of filler required in some of the joins, but nothing too out of the ordinary.
All of the work in this kit is in the engine and the gear housings. There is a high parts count and a great deal of tiny parts to assemble. Be prepared to be patient. Here you see some of the parts are prepainted to help the painting process down the track.
With the engine, sub-assemblies completed the internal surfaces of the model are painted and weathered using enamel washes from AMMO.
The engine sections are now fitted to the sub-frame. This is a little clumsy, so take your time to find the right positions.
The pilot’s basket frame is now assembled. There is quite a bit of building in this little section, but for the most part, the fit was good.
The basket was then painted in a light grey and attached to the rest of the model. This was all a bit flimsy but seemed to hold together better than I was expecting.
The blades were now painted in a dark green colour from Vallejo. The connecting points for the assemblies of the actual blades are quite fine, so care must be taken not to snap the part.
The top cowling sections and the pilot’s seat are now fixed to the model. It was a very tight fit and there were a few mis-aligned panels, but there wasn’t a lot I could do about it. It became pretty apparent here too, that all the work on the engine was going to be hard to pick up on the finished kit.
With the wheels now attached, it became clear we had a tail-sitter. Unfortunately, given the naked look of the front sections of the subject there was going to be very little opportunity to add weight, so that was something I would just have to deal with when mounting the model to a base. I can see a big opportunity for someone to cast the front wheel assembly in white metal and sell it as an aftermarket accessory. It would solve the problem very easily.
Now using various mixes of Light Sea Grey and White from Tamiya, I set about cleaning the paintwork up and looking to add some subtle shading.
The stripe around the tail section was masked and sprayed white. The decals were then applied.
Using a heavily thinned mix of AMMO Light grey and Schwartzgrau some post shading was applied. I kind of regretted this stage as it made the model look quite dirty, but I would tone that back in later stages.
A light oil was using Ammo’s Starship Filth was applied to help lift the detail.
Using a white oil paint, some of the leading edges and top surfaces of the model are treated. A small dot of white oil paint is then blended in with the paintwork using a brush moistened with white spirit.
In order to extract a little more interest in the light paintwork and tone down the post shade work, a soft sponge was used to stipple on the Light Grey colour from previous steps.
Using the same technique, small chips of Black grey are added to represent superficial chipping. Having later thought about this I think I would have been better served using an aluminium colour…
The harness supplied with the kit was a bit of a low point. They just didn’t look right to my eye. In an attempt to manipulate them into some kind of plausible shape I actually ended up snapping them and gave up on trying to use them. I picked up a set of laser-cut paper harnesses and set about using them on the model.
After a few agonizing hours, the harness was in place. It was far from perfect, but it was the best I could do, and it was considerably better than the kit supplied harness in my opinion. (Note to self though…never buy these paper belts again…it really tested my patience). Was it accurate? Probably not, but it was plausible and did look kind of cool on the finished model.
To address the back heavy issue in the kit, a small pin was fitted into the front wheel. This would later be fixed to a small landscaped base. Here you also see both of the maintenance panels have been fixed to the model, and a couple of pieces of stretched sprue act as the support to keep them open.
That is where we will stop this part, Clayton will add the rotors, but also a custom made base and figures int he next part of this article to finish of his Hummingbird so Stay tuned...
Clayton Ockerby
Many thanks to the guys at MiniArt in Ukraine for sending Clayton the kit. Stay tuned for the second part of the build here at TMN.
Thanks also to AMMO for sending Clayton the paints and weathering materials to make this kit...
