Quickboost

1/72 Messerschmitt ME-262 Engine For the Hasegawa Kit

Stock Number: 72 233

Reviewed By  Brian R. Baker, IPMS# 43146

MSRP: 4.50 € (~$5.56) Website: www.quickboost.net This is part of a series of aftermarket accessories for some of the better 1/72 scale aircraft kits on the market today. The Hasegawa Messerschmitt ME-262A is one of several good ME-262 kits currently available. Aside from the Hasegawa kit, these include Monogram, Hobby Boss, Academy, Heller, Johan, and Italeri. Although this conversion unit could probably be used on any of these kits if the required work is done, it fits right onto the Hasegawa kit with little effort, as that is what it was designed for. I suspect that you would have to do quite a bit of trimming on the other kits, although I only checked the Hobby Boss kit, and it would have taken some real surgery. I'd suggest sticking to the Hasegawa kit, as it is a good one, although it has been around for some time, and lacks detail in such areas as cockpit and wheel wells. The Quickboost unit consists of a solid resin casting of the LEFT engine nacelle of an ME-262A. It would only be useful on Jumo 004B engines, as a few ME-262 experimental models used BMW 003 jet engines. The part exposes about seventy five percent of the powerplant as it would be seen with most of the cowling panels removed. Trimming the unit off of the mounting resin is easy, and there is very little flash to remove. In short, it is a very high quality component, and looks good on the completed model. The contours of the nacelle are identical to those of the Hasegawa kit. A little filler was required. I modeled my kit using the Hasegawa kit decals for an ME-262A-2a of KG-51 "Edelweiss", which operated out of Germany during late 1944 and 1945. I did the standard boxtop scheme, but did not include the bomb load, as an airplane down for maintenance (and these engines required a lot of it) would never have bombs on the racks. I replaced the crosses and swastikas, but used the rest of the kit decals, which had only slight silvering on some of the edges.

I can only think of two improvements that Quickboost could make on this kit. One, some vacuform engine cowling panels would be useful in displaying the model, as the plane could be portrayed with parts of the engine cowling scattered around, as this shows a configuration normally seen during maintenance. Otherwise, one would have to vacuform them personally, or maybe thin down the parts from the unused nacelle, but this would be a lot of work. Second, and more serious, is the information provided. In fact, there is none. I went through my reference library, and although I found some material on the Jumo 004B engine, there wasn't much color material, and those colored pictures I did find were not too useful and sometimes conflicted. A detailed chart showing the actual colors on the engine would have been helpful, as this is really a small kit by itself. There are a lot of little "thingies" on this engine, and even with reference sources, I haven't the faintest idea what they all are, or what colors they should be. Maybe being a prop man does have its disadvantages. However, that being said, this is a little jewel of a unit, and is certainly worth getting to dress up what would otherwise be a rather drab, buttoned-up ME-262 model. Thanks to John Noack of IPMS and Quickboost for the review sample.