MSRP: $32.50

Since the late 1980s Hasegawa has had a Bf-109E in its catalog. They rebox it with new decals, conversion parts, special armament and other "upgrades". Is this a bad thing? Not in my book. Opening this kit was like visiting an old friend who had learned some tricks.

So what do you get in the kit? You get three large light grey sprues of flash free plastic. Who would have ever guessed that after all these years? The surface detail is beautiful with very thin panel lines. You are given a fret of steel photo etch and two styles of Emil canopies, both early and late. What makes this one different than any other Hasegawa 109E? You are treated to a clear resin Peil G IV direction finder for under the fuselage. As far as I know this is the first time this component has been available to the modeler short of scratch building it. This opens up some other aircraft to build as well as the two depicted on the decal sheet. You can either build the all black night fighter from NJG1 or Hptm Ihlfeld's colorful aircraft from LG2. This aircraft features yellow control surfaces. These are actually given to you on the decal sheet. I would probably paint them if I was going to build this machine. The decals themselves are very nicely printed. While they look thick on the sheet they actually fit quite well and are thin.

For those of you who have built a Hasegawa Emil there is nothing new to tell you. The fit is excellent with no real need for filler anywhere. The cockpit is adequate right out of the box but I elected to use the Cutting Edge cockpit (set CEC48379). This little set is the best 109E cockpit on the market as far as I'm concerned. It fits just as well as the kit offering and looks better, especially the seat with molded in seatbelts, laminated instrument panel and oxygen regulator. The cockpit was painted RLM 02 and given a wash of burnt umber artist oils. Silver pencil and some dry brushing brings this beautiful cockpit to life.

As I said before assembling the fuselage is as good as you are going to find. You have to decide if you are going to put the splitter plate in the intake or not. Not all 109Es have them and the all black one I was building did not so it was left out. The cockpit can be installed from the bottom after the fuselage halves are joined.

The wings are an effortless assembly. Five pieces make up the wings. Two radiator deflectors and the three piece main wing assembly. You have the choice of having the slats and flaps drooped or up tight. I elected to drop the slats and leave the flaps up.

Offering the wings to the fuselage posed no real problems. I did have to fill the aft join with a little putty but this is the only place. Don't forget to install the engine cannon as it is the mount for the prop hub. I forgot it and had to 'work' something out. Of course that also meant I forgot to add the cowl guns before assembling the upper cowl to the fuselage. I guess you should at least look at the instructions.

The horizontal control surfaces were added and again no filler. The support struts were left off until after painting. I masked the canopy with Tamiya tape and attached them for painting. Add the engine intake and it was time to paint. God that was fast. Have I mentioned that I love this kit?

Wash the model in Dawn dish detergent and apply Polly-S Plastic Prep to the surface and it was time to prime. I used Tamiya spray primer white. Not surprisingly I found no place that needed touch up.

I elected to paint this model the all black night fighter just because it was different. Let's see it should be…. black. I had some Polly-S RLM 22 black that I used to spray over the entire model. Wow, that was painless! The wheel wells and slat area were given a coat of RLM 02 for color as I could not determine if they shouldn't be. A coat of Alclad Gloss Base and it was time to decal.

Using Mr. Mark Softner to apply the decals proved to be no problem. Even though the decals look thick on the sheet they proved to be perfect with the Mr. Mark Softner. I used the kit decals throughout with the following exceptions. Using Lynn Ritger's Modeler Datagaph Vol 1 on the early 109s as a reference I agree with Lynn that the code markings should not be grey but a rust red. I had a friend scan in the decals and produce some red letters. I first put the grey ones down and then after they had dried I put the red over them. I was quite happy with the look. You may think otherwise and stick with the grey markings, your call. The only other thing I differed from the kit instructions is the top wing markings. The markings provided in the kit are speculative as there are no photos showing the upper wing crosses on these black 109s. I think that they would have been the same style as in use on normal fighters of the day without the black. This would make them the normal late war style of crosses. I used some Aeromaster decals for the upper wing crosses. Again you may think differently and like the large crosses. Your choice and right now no one can prove you or me wrong.

Once the decals were dry a coat of Alclad gloss base and when dry a Model Master Acrylic Flat sealed everything.

I was hoping that the weathering would set this model off, however, the photos in the Modeler Datagraph showed very little weathering. Paint chipping was kept to a minimum. Some exhaust stains were added but they were pretty invisible. I did use Mig Pigments for some dust and dirt on the bottom of the wings and on the wheels. Gunze Oil was used to stain the bottom a little but again it seemed to disappear. Another coat of flat and it was almost done.


Remove the masks from the canopy and attach them and the small pieces, like the mass weights, pitot tube, antenna mast and antenna. You need to add the Peil IV antenna. It required just a quick clean up with a sanding stick and was attached to the bottom of the model with white glue. A little clear green and red mixed with some white glue and added to the appropriate wing tip and it was done.

Conclusions

This release is a great kit with a lot of options. The availability of the Peil IV antenna is a nice addition. I will pick up another one and do a desert aircraft that had this antenna. It is nice that you get both canopies. Is it worth the money? I thought so. I certainly had a lot of fun building it. Are there downsides? Yes, there is no engine making the cooling vents on top and bottom of the engine see through, as well as, the radiators under the nose and in the wings. Are these big detractors to you? You have to decide. It wasn't a big deal to me. The cockpit was okay but I did substitute the Cutting Edge cockpit. As I stated earlier this is the best looking cockpit for the Bf-109E available anywhere and I highly recommend it. With those things said, I still think it is a wonderful kit with a great fit and some impressive options.
Highly recommended.

References:
The Messerschmitt Bf-109 Part 1: Modellers Datafile No.9, Lynn Ritger, SAM Publications, ISBN 0-9551858-0-7