Build Review - Academy Me 163B/S (12460) – Part 1

At the end of my previous post I mentioned Academy's 1:72 scale Me 163B/S kit, so time to get on with it. Experimental aircraft from WWII / the early Cold War period are an area of interest to me (something I'll probably write about in the future) and so this seemed like a good kit to get me back into modelling after my break.

Academy kits seem to have a reputation as a bit hit and miss but generally I like them. Opinions on-line tend to suggest that this is a good kit so my expectations were raised. Time to have an opinion of my own.

First impressions were that this looked like a really nice kit, I especially liked that there was a choice between the standard single seat Me 163B and the two seat glider trainer, the Me 163S.

I decided to opt for the Me 163B, enhanced as usual with an Eduard photo-etch set (SS256) for the interior and some small exterior details. Colour scheme wise, I'm probably going to deviate from those offered in the box, we'll see how things go before I decide.

So to start with I built the cockpit. I took the twin seater cockpit tub, filled down the consoles, cut away the rear seat area but left the rear floor. Two reasons, first, insurance in case I made a mess of the photo-etch. It's been a while since I'd worked on something this small. Second was that I felt the longer floor would settle in the base better as cockpit slippage seems to a caused a few problems on previous builds.


However in the end my fears were unfounded. The photo-etch built beautifully and the cockpit fitted fine.

I will say one thing though, it's really small, less than 1cm x 1cm and that includes the full width of the side consoles. Yes I knew it was a small aircraft, I knew I'm working with a small scale, but still, it was tiny! However a plus side is that nice bubble canopy really opens up the cockpit compared to many aircraft of the time, so all that detail is going to be on show for a change.

Next up was the tail section, two halves together with a tail wheel assembly at the base. It appears the tail wheel is meant to be moveable but that makes it quite difficult to glue around.

I also found there was a bit of gap at the base. Pushing this together tight seemed to impede the movement of the wheel assembly so I left it. I then filled and filed it while it was dry fitted to the fuselage which ensured the wheel still moved.

As for the wings, they went together as wings should. And there we are, all the main parts assembled,ready to be put together. So far, so good. I'm really enjoying this kit, which is how it should be.

A Little Bit of History Repeating?

Back when I started this blog I gave myself a “to do” list of Academy kits to build but despite the best intentions they didn’t really get built.

The P-39 was built, but if I’m honest I did not build it well, in fact it was awful and my inexperience was showed up somewhat. The P-51B looked like a good kit but I managed to make a series of mistakes which consigned it to the scrap pile, likewise with the Hellcat. The P-47 went the way of eBay and the Ju-87 remains unbuilt and may well be sold at some point in the future.

Now don’t get me wrong here, this isn’t an Academy bashing post, I was so keen to get back into modelling that I rushed, bought a stack of kits, made far too many mistakes and never achieved the original goals that I set out to achieve. And of course, I wrote off a whole lot of kits in the process.

Recently I took a break and decided to spend a bit of time going back to basics, practicing and taking a more steady approach to modelling. Of course this doesn’t make particularly good reading, which explains the absence of blog posts in the last few months, but it has been useful. Not feeling the need to do something with half an eye on how I will blog about it afterwards has also been a relief.

So back to the here and now.

Regular readers, (I’m surprised, but the stats do show that there are still some of you checking in), will notice that this blog has had an update. A new look and a new beginning. And you know what? I’ve just gone out and bought another Academy kit…