| Catalogue No.: | 61063 |
| Scale: | 1/48 |
| Media: | Injected |
| Review Type: | In Box |
| Rating: | Recommended |
S u m m a r y |
| Contents: | 66 gray plastic parts, 5 clear, 2 poly caps, decals |
| Price: | $23.00 usd |
| Advantages: | Tamiya engineering and fit. Fixed upper cowl and oil cooler housing |
| Disadvantages: | Same old pointy prop. |
| Recommendation: | Recommended |
F i r s t L o o k |
Apparently Tamiya
does listen to the modelers, at least partially. Tamiya seems to have corrected the shape
of the cowl in their new Bf-109E4/7 kit. The revised cowl has less of a slope angle on the
area in front of the upper cooling slots and the little lip at the front edge of the gun
troughs is now present. The oil cooler housing under the nose has also been refined and
shallowed.
On the other hand, we still have the same pointy prop that graced the E-3 kit. The new E-4/7 should have all of the same fit and engineering that the previous E-3 had. With the exception of the cowl, all of the plastic parts look to be the same sprues that were in the E-3.
A new sprue of clear parts with the correct squared off canopy replaces the E-3 parts.
The decals are typical Tamiya, well printed and in register. Markings cover Munchenberg’s White 12 from JG-26, Schroer’s E-7 Trop Black 8 from JG-27 and Helmut Wick’s double chevron from JG-2. Tamiya includes the little bird emblem said to have graced some of Wick’s airplanes.
C o n c l u s i o n |
I’ve build several of Tamiya’s E-3 and I personally prefer the look of the finished Tamiya kit to that of the Hasegawa 109E. Having apparently fixed the cowl problem, Tamiya took a step in the right direction, the prop can be lived with or reworked. Overall this kit can be highly recommended to anyone interested in early 109s.
With both the Hasegawa and Tamiya 109Es available now, the modeler has a great set of choices. As someone else said recently, this certainly is a great time to be a model builder.
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