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He 162D

Old Dog

Old Dog

Well-known member
This is the Dragon kit derived from the Trimaster kit. It contains the complete B model kit including the PE hinges for the engine cowling which Dragon left out of their original B model kit, along with new forward swept wings. These are one piece molds so no halves to glue together. I plan on building the kit OOB with only an Eduard instrument panel and a Quick Boost bang seat. The kit has a PE instrument panel but there is no way I could do it justice painting it up.

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Here is the time stamp

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A bit of history...The D model of the He 162 was a progressive development of the basic airframe that was designed in parallel with the C model. They both utilized the B series fuselage and a Heinkel-Hirth 011A turbojet. The C model had wings that were swept at 38 degrees and a V type or butterfly tail that had been previously tested on the He 280. The wing had an anhedral portion at approximately two-thirds span. The D model was essentially the same but it was equipped with a swept forward wing. Wind tunnel testing had show that both the swept forward and swept back wings had about the same critical Mach number for a given angle but the swept forward wings eliminated the tip stall tenancy of swept back wings. Unfortunately it also required a very strong structure as the forward sweep causes the wing tips to be subjected to a twisting force. Both the C and D were envisaged as target defense interceptors and they were to be equipped with two 30 mm Mk 103 cannon on a special mount enabling them to tilt upwards allowing the guns to be fired upward into a target while flying under it. Neither of these models were built but when Heinkel's Schwechat facility was overrun by Allied forces a half completed prototype was found with a set of interchangeable swept back and swept forward wings.

Quick boost bang seat

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While the Dragon kit is not as easy to build as the Tamiya kit I'm hoping the hardest part will be determining how much weight to add to keep it from tail sitting. Probably be a day or two before this hits the bench.
 
OK, lets get on with this lawn dart :laugh: My first move was to remove all the parts I wasn't going to be using...

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Uhhh, wait a minute are there any parts left to build ? OK, yeah there are a few. Dragon kits although they appear to be main stream in actuality they are closer to short run kits as far as fit go especially the re-branded Trimaster kits so a bit of time was spent cleaning up parts and removing mold alignment seams. When that was done the interior parts were painted the appropriate colors. I then started with the main gear bay assembly. I wanted it done so I could trap it inside the fuselage and determine how much weight would be needed to prevent tail sitting. The gear bay is quite well detailed and has more parts than the cockpit. There are still five other parts to be added after it's in the fuselage.

162d-b02.jpg


I did find it necessary to sand a bit off the fore and aft bulkheads to get the fuselage to close properly. While the glue was hardening up I went ahead and assembled the engine housing. The kit provides an alternate base piece if you don't want to display the engine. It has an intake and exhaust plug that allows you to leave the engine body out. I found this to be a bit fiddly to assemble as there are no alignment pins and only two shallow ridges to glue the doors to, I finally taped the doors together until I got them attached to the base then glued the top seam.

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I had planned to leave the intake and exhaust parts off to eliminate some hard masking later but found when I fitted the intake it was larger than the housing, so I glued it on and sanded it to fit...

162d-b03.jpg


I should have investigated as to why the fit was poor but didn't and it would come back to haunt me later.

Once the gear bay was solid I taped the fuselage together to see what weight I would need. As it turned out with the solid forward swept wings and smaller tail assembly I think I could have gotten by without any weight but not wish to temp fate I glued in a couple of nuts that together weighed 8 grams, the instructions say 9 but I suspect that is for the A variant.
Next the cockpit side wall bits were added. The cockpit was fairly spartan on the real thing and the bulk of the cockpit doesn't go in until later. There were a few PE parts I didn't install either because they just looked to one dimensional or they were just too freaking small for me to deal with.

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I have an "A" model one of these in 1/32 that I will dress to the nines someday, this one is all about the outside appearance. The instrument panel is tiny but looks OK...

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The bang seat painted up nice and it sure beat struggling with PE belts. The down side was there were no positive locators for the stirrups or the actuation handles. I drilled holes for the stirrups but in the end they wouldn't clear the wheel well housing and I had to cut them off.

162d-b08.jpg


I then glued the fuselage together. It actually fit pretty good and only required a minimal amount of seam work. When I went to attach the engine housing I found that at the front I had some rather nasty ridges...

162d-b09.jpg


I suspect a better plan would have been to glue the doors to the intake, then to the base. It would have resulted in less sanding on the intake and probably would have eliminated most of the ridges. I feel that the alignment ridges on the base part were too close together at the front. The exhaust housing fit pretty well.

With the fuselage together and the worst of the seam work taken care of the balance of the cockpit parts were added...

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The worst part of the fuselage assembly was the tail cone. The cone had a square peg and the fuselage a square hole but the hole was nearly double the size of the peg and neither surface was flat. I cut the peg off and worked on the mating surfaces for a long time before finally achieving a good fit that also aligned with the fuselage. A lot of eyeball work required as other than the tail skid there wasn't much of a reference for alignment.

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The mounting holes for the 'V' tail are a lot larger than the pins on the tail parts so mounting those should be fun as well.

So here is where it stands now...

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Once the wings and tail go on we'll be ready for some paint. Speaking of wings I was dubious as to how well the Dragon made wings would fit the Trimaster parts. Well, not all that great, but I guess it could be worse. I spent some time tweaking and here is how they look at the moment, note they will fit tighter when glued, they are just sitting in place for this photo...

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They did create one rather odd area, I assume the real aircraft would have had a fairing here, nothing some Milliput won't fix...

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so once the wings a tail are on and I get the canopy masked we should be good to go for paint ! Thanks for looking in !
 
Swell job Gary, kinda looks like that wing root faring is more suited for the straight wing variant.
 
Thanks guys ! Bob no doubt they probably should have redone the fuselage halves but I suspect they didn't want to spend any more on it than they had to.
 
Looks like some tough fixes there Gary but I'm sure you will get past them ok.! (y)

good subject too
 
Thanks guys !

Wings, tail and a coat of primer on...

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A few things to touch up then on to paint !
 
Love the 162. In its V tail config though it is just so weird looking. Cant wait to see more.
James
 
Holly Cow ... ! I didn't even know this kit existed ( well it's not 1/72 :idonno )

Anyhow, a great cockpit with this kit Gary (y) (y) .

Awaiting more progress :popcorn Cheers, Christian B)
 
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