Heinkel He177 A-02 - Conversion from Venerable Airfix Kit

Finally finished! This is an early version Heinkel He177 A-0 pre-series aircraft which was very much photographed and appears in most publications dealing with the particular aircraft.

A photo of this aircraft DL+AQ inspired me to switch from jet aircraft to World War 2 when I was still a young teenager and I have always wanted to build one. I used the Airfix kit not the better Revell one because I have six of the former (ok, ok I also have 8 Revell ones) and frankly did not know what to do with them. The way I see it, if I am going to chop off a lot of parts might as well use the oldies.

Conversion consistes of cut down fuselage shortened by about 30mm, lower tailfin & rudder, different engines and cowls, reworked prop blades, reshaped nacelles, new flaps, different glazing throughout, different exhausts and many many other little oddities like this.

The walk-lines were a nightmare and took around two weeks to do! I consulted Marco about the colour as this appeared very light in photos. Now normally, Luftwaffe walk lines are red but there are examples of white, grey, and brown. I opted for red and they came out perfectly - see the black & white photo.

Anyway, hope you like.

Wow beautiful Aldo just beautiful....the black and white looks more real ...welldone Aldo considering the airfix kit.......

Very nice, well done.

well done Aldo

bellezza Aldo, proset hi, min dejjem kien jogobni dal l ajruplan.

Very nice, well done!!

p.s. now do the others as well

Great model pres!

Interesting how the red changed to light grey in the monochrome image, contrary to the norm that red is darker in BW photos ... probably the result of the digitechnology ...

Iv

Well done Aldo,

Another fantastic piece of work, up to your usual standard.

I quite like the undercarrage and the way it operated.

Cyril.

Prosit Aldo another huge behemoth to add to your collection, love the way it turned out.

Nice work Aldo and a very interesting subject.

Great model pres!

Interesting how the red changed to light grey in the monochrome image, contrary to the norm that red is darker in BW photos ... probably the result of the digitechnology ...

Iv

Ivan, I don't want to hijack Aldo's post but what you mention is very relevant to my degree thesis! I'm attempting to create an application that colourises ww2 greyscale images with the help of some user intervention.

I'm trying to find resources on what types of camera film was used during the war to determine the effect each had on colour.

I'd be really grateful if any of you guys have/could point me to this sort of information.

I can always start a new topic on the forum for this.

Thanks, and apologies to Aldo again for side tracking a bit

Wayne wrote:Nice work Aldo and a very interesting subject.

Great model pres!

Interesting how the red changed to light grey in the monochrome image, contrary to the norm that red is darker in BW photos ... probably the result of the digitechnology ...

Iv

Ivan, I don't want to hijack Aldo's post but what you mention is very relevant to my degree thesis! I'm attempting to create an application that colourises ww2 greyscale images with the help of some user intervention.

I'm trying to find resources on what types of camera film was used during the war to determine the effect each had on colour.

I'd be really grateful if any of you guys have/could point me to this sort of information.

I can always start a new topic on the forum for this.

Thanks, and apologies to Aldo again for side tracking a bit

Wayne more then the films you need to go indepth of what chemicals they used as developers, especially for BW. Colour was still in it's infant stage, so certain exposures created strange colours depending the chemicals. Beware that nowadays there are many digitally retouched wartime films and fotos.As I hinted and this example show digitally manipulated images [sepia and BW] play much different then the original BW. Nice interesting thesis mate ...as for film reel they already used 35mm but have a kind of lens that depicted strange subdued colours, as for fotos there were a mixture from large to minute negatives, Kodak was alreday one of the top brands ...