Home  |  What's New  |  Features  |  Gallery  |  Reviews  |  Reference  |  Forum  |  Search

A4 Rocket (V2)

 

A4 Rocket (V-2)

by Jeffery S. Harrison

 

 

Introduction

 

Last week I was busy printing out hundreds of little league soccer photos on my computer. After cueing up about a dozen I would go over to my work bench and kill time by building a model. 

To my surprise, the result of this was a complete 1/48th scale V2 rocket. Even though I believe this weapon belonged to the artillery, I claim to be a Luftwaffe modeler and it DOES fly so I thought I'd submit it to Hyper Scale!

 

 

Construction and Painting

 

I used the Mauve kit and built it straight out of the box. 

The camouflage scheme came out of the Monogram book "V-Missiles of the Third Reich" and was painted using Polly-S Midstone, Humbrol 86 and Humbrol 41. 

I thought the midstone was a little too yellow so I started by priming the model overall with Floquil Zinc Chromate Primer. This is a nice red color (V2s look pretty cool in overall red--just like something you would see in a Sci-Fi movie) that added just a hint of red to the Midstone and at the same time gave the Polly-S paint something to hold on to since I would be masking over it for both of the other colors. The second color I painted was the Humbrol 41. This is a nice off-white but again I felt was a little too white so I painted it over the Midstone to add just a touch more brown to the color. Finally I painted the Humbrol 86 to complete the camouflage scheme. 

The white serial numbers (I guess that is what those white numbers are supposed to be) using typewriter correction tape. This is that plastic with the white coating on that you insert over a typing error so that you can erase the letter you just typed. I cut a small piece of this stuff the size of the number I wanted and taped it face down to the area I wanted the number to go. Next I used a sharp pencil to write the number on the correction tape and it gets magically transferred in white to the surface of the model. 

This was followed up with a coat of Floquil Crystal Cote (the best gloss coat ever made) to protect the serials and to provide an adequate surface for the black wash I used around the fuselage in the lower white camouflage color. I don't know what this is but it appears to be some sort of venting for the rocket. 

Lastly I over coated the gloss with Floquils Flat Finish. For some reason I've never been able to get this stuff to dry flat so I rarely use it. However, in this instance I wanted a semi-gloss finish for the missile and that is exactly what I always get from Floquils "Flat."

 


Models, Description and Images Copyright © 1999 by Jeffery S. Harrison
Page Created 19 December, 1999
Last Updated 26 July, 2007

Back to HyperScale Main Page

Back to Features Index