Scale Plastic & Rail

Airfix Club Messerschmitt Bf 109E-3/E-7

Messerschmitt Bf 109E-3/E-7
Airfix Club
Catalogue #A82012
Limited Edition Kit, available through Airfix Club membership.

What do Academy, Eduard, Hasegawa, ICM, LF, Pegasus, Planet, Revell, Tamiya, Unimodel and Zvezda have in common? Well, they all produce kits of the iconic Luftwaffe fighter, the Messerschmitt Bf 109 in 1/48 scale and, as you can probably guess, you can obtain virtually every type of the aircraft.

Go onto Hannants website, click on 1/48 scale, type in Bf 109, and you are blessed with 13 pages of kits, decals, engines, wheels, guns, cockpits, canopies – all manner of goodies and virtually every accessory under the sun. Bf 109 fans are certainly well catered for. Kit prices range from £8.99 (Pegasus) to an enormous £86.99 (Planet – a resin kit of the twin fuselaged 'Z').

Airfix have recently entered the fray with two releases at around £15.99 which is very reasonable these days: a) Bf 109E-1/E-3/E-4 and b) Bf109E-1/E-3/E-7 Trop. However, if you want the latest Airfix 'Club' edition of the Messerschmitt Bf109E-3/E-7, the subject of this review, it is free! FREE? I hear you gasp! Yes, free, but there is a catch – you have to join the Airfix Club - just click HERE for details.  Basically, for an annual fee of £16.99, not only do you get a quarterly magazine, discounts and other benefits too numerous to mention here, but once a year you also get a free kit such as this boxing of the Bf 109E-3/E-7 which has never been released before, and it is exclusive to club members. It seems quite a good deal to me, especially as Airfix are producing some very interesting models these days. For example, just take a look at our Robin Jenkins' review of the Fairey Swordfish recently. Modelling colleagues have also been singing the praises of other recent Airfix releases.

With this boxing, the Airfix Club member has the option of building an E3 or an E7 with some pretty impressive and unusual markings:

• Bf 109E-3  Aircraft formerly flown by Feldwebel Karl Heir, 1./JG76, evaluated at the Aircraft and Armament Experimental Establishment, Boscombe Down, England, 1941.
• Bf 109E-7  Evaluated by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force, 1941.

Opening the box reveals a 12 page A4 Instruction manual with 11 pages printed in mono and the last page in colour showing  two four views with  camouflage markings, Humbrol colour codes and colour names, plus stencil locations. Tucked away in the pages of instructions is the decal sheet with protective tissue paper. The instruction manual is larger than the box width and has to be 'moulded' to fit, hence my photographs with bent pages. The 'how to' drawings are clear and can be easily understood.

There is one sealed plastic bag containing two large light grey plastic sprues and a separate smaller sealed bag containing the clear canopy parts on a single sprue. I would have preferred the larger sprues to have been separately packed for anti-scratch security, but at least the packers in India (where the kits are made) have placed them back to back.

Box Contents

Flash is minimal, but there are a few unsightly ejector pin marks, for example, in the wing wheel bays and on the undersides of the flaps in particular, which will take a fair amount of remedial action to rectify matters.

Ejector pin marks

The etched panel lines are a bit on the deep side as are the 'rivets' at the wing root location on the fuselage. These may become less noticeable after painting but I think a couple of coats of Mr. Surfacer might be required. I reserve my judgement.

Panel lines and rivets

One thing is immediately very obvious, the plastic is very thick. To give you an impression of this, I have photographed the Bf 109 engine cowl next to a cowl from the 1/48 Hobby Boss Me 262 and you can see the difference.

Plastic thickness comparison

However, a modelling friend from the Manston club is a big fan of the 1/48 Airfix kits and has already built the Bf 109. "Just cut the airframe from the sprues and dry fit them", he enthused, "you won't be disappointed". And I wasn't.

Armed with my trusty Xuron cutters (are there any better?) I just snipped the parts from the sprues and with no further clean ups, I clipped the fuselage and wing parts together. What a superb fit – mind you, location pins as thick as your wrist certainly helps. In fact I had to gently insert a scalpel blade to separate the fuselage halves again.

Images to illustrate parts fit

The Airfix designers have cunningly moulded the engine to the fuselage sides. This is fine, but it does render the engine very undersized and this kit has no armament to be fitted in the nose section. I had heard a rumour that the engine cowl with its thick sides would not fit until it had been thinned considerably. Whether this was just a rumour, I don't know, but when I dry fitted the cowl it fitted easily, but was not a good fit. Initial thoughts are that either filler or thin plastic card might be needed where it abuts the main fuselage in the firewall area.

Engine moulding

Cowl to fuselage fit

The modelling grapevine (where would we be without it?) came up with two other points of contention. The first was the matter of the propeller possibly being too 'thin' – in other words the chord, or width, of the blades was too narrow. I think they have a point but I have not checked it against scale drawings. The other point was the quality of the original decals which left some modellers wanting better from a major manufacturer. I understand that the later sheets are now being printed by Cartograf in Italy, but whether the sheet with this kit is from them I don't know, as their name is not imprinted. The decals are certainly thin(ish) and perfectly in register, so let us hope they are.

Something that is missing from the decal sheet is ' instruments'! The instrument panel has moulded bevels but there is nothing to put in them. That is a shame.

Instrument panel/Decals

Nice touches were the 'weighted' tyres/wheels and the choice of three spinners - again, just check your references carefully plus the angled undercarriage leg mountings which should help to get that splayed look just right.

Weighted tyres

Spinners

Undercarriage legs

What I do like about this Airfix kit is the ease of finding the numbered parts on the sprues. No more dodging around from side to side trying to find that elusive sprocket gobbler in a random location. Airfix are numbering their parts in consecutive order – top left of sprue 'B', for example, is part number 1, followed by part 2 below and you then work your way down and up until the last part number is at the bottom right, which in this case, is part number 82. 'Simples' as the meerkat say. A nice touch.

The clear sprue has a host of canopy options with no less than four windshields to choose from – just make sure of your references before fitting. They are beautifully clear but a tad too thick but nothing to get too upset about.

The plastic thickness really spoils the undercarriage covers – OK when viewed from the side of course, but at approximately 1mm thick when viewed from the front, this is a bit too much. I am sure Mr Messerschmitt would not have been too happy if his factory had produced covers equivalent to almost three inches thick! Mind you, the modeller is given the option of fitting the undercarriage in the 'up' position with half wheels moulded to the covers, so perhaps that is the way to go.

U/C covers

Half wheels and covers

Lastly, the pilot's seat has really awful moulded seat belts (they don't even look like seat belts) - these certainly need to be removed and after-market or 'home made' belts fitted for far more realism.

Pilot's seat

However, it is not all bad news. Having seen the kit built up by my friend, Richard Jenkinson at Manston, it does look very nice. And do you know what, it actually looks like a Bf 109E and isn't that what this hobby of ours is all about. At a quick glance, it is difficult to distinguish the finished Airfix model from the Tamiya and Hasegawa offerings. If you want this kit and the unusual decals it has to offer, just join the Airfix Club and it is yours – FREE!

JOIN THE AIRFIX MODEL CLUB HERE!

So what do we think?
As already mentioned, the kit is free to club members and, from initial dry fits, the fit of the main airframe parts are excellent, but it is a bit like the curate's egg – good in parts. My school report used to say, "Could have done better", and with a bit of tweaking I am sure the Airfix designers can improve on certain areas. Having said all that, I like it and if you are thinking of purchasing the Bf109E offerings that are on sale, they represent good value for money. I am sure that Airfix Club members will be cherishing their free 'collector's item' and I don't blame them.

Our thanks to Ryan Maxwell and the very nice people at Hornby Hobbies Limited, the home of Airfix, for this review sample.

Hornby Hobbies Limited, Margate, Kent, CT9 4JX, UK
www.airfix.com

Peter Buckingham