1/18 Me-163 Komet

[Jnewboy]

Wow for a piece of **** kit you did one hell of a job Jon!! Very Nice!!

Anyone from Pegasus out there? This would make a great kit just like the V-1!
Merits out of the picture on this one.......
Pickels got plenty on his plate but maybe he can squeeze it in.

Great Paint job on the Komet and the ground crew looks cool, what figures did
you use?

Thanks, it took days of build up primer and wet sanding over and over to get rid of the lines that were not suppose to be there and by that time the etched in panel lines were disappearing and had to be etched back in and so on. It was a beast, plus many small parts like the propeller were razor thin and made of resin! stupid! he could have made it easier out of flexible plastic sheets which is what I did. No windows for the rear, at all. No way of putting them in either so I had to build a little frame for each side and then cut my own clear plastic, bend them and insert. No antennas at all, had to make them and the pitot tube, the ski had no braces so that had to be made, no armor window in front of pilot and so on. Like I said, months... I did it from the replica they have at Chico Air museum. Its my favorite paint scheme I have seen and there are pics of a white 11 that are similar. The ground crew are all Harrison Ford The Indiana Jones with bazooka, repainted and added the hat or cap and Grunts Kettenkrad came out great!

Thanks for the kind words guys!

If anyone wants to see more pics of mine there are many more here:

http://s1237.photobucket.com/user/Jnewb ... t=3&page=6

[Light.Inf.Scout]

Jnewboy...PM sent. Must say yours looks a helluva a lot better than mine....

[Coreyeagle48]

Greetings:

I remember years ago when Jack first put out the ME-163 and started doing the preassembled birds for the MTS store. I happened to be at World War II Weekend that year and MTS had traveled to the event from Ohio to sell their merchandise. This was the heyday of 1/18 and they had a lot of items for sale including the 1/18 Flight 19 Avengers, BBI helicopters and some others.

Anyway to make a long story short, I traveled through their stand. They had in a display case two of the ME-163 Komets. They had been recently completed because I heard the vendors talking about it. On these two examples the decals were already cracking and peeling off. Looking closer at them I saw that each just had horrendous paint quality and overall appearance. I thought at the time maybe it was due to the fact they had rushed them to be able to display them at the show. It doesn't seem that was the case anymore.

In a way the whole thing is sad, if Jack had focused on the finer details of his work he could have had a very niche market with a good following. But the cutting corners on the finished projects, high prices and business practices just did him in at the end.

Corey