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Miniwing 1/144 Junkers Ju 287

By Terry Patrick

Introduction

Before I start my review perhaps I can point out that I normally build my models in wood, for this reason I may well miss obvious points or go the other way and make statements that are blindingly obvious to the regular resin builder.

On looking in the box my first impression was that this would be a quite straight forward model to build, there were virtually no air bubbles but there was a slight break-up of the razor thin wing trailing edges. My only real concern was the cockpit glazing, I thought that it is not going to be easy to get it right.

The Kit

For the most part it was a simple matter to remove the mouldings from the sprue, the only items that I was a little concerned about were the engine front cowlings. I felt that if I simply razor sawed them flush from the sprue they would be too short, so I cut sufficient of the sprue away so that I was able to remove them without shortening them. However joining the cowling to the nacelle still required some filling and blending. This was a little tedious but I was happy with the result.

I found that before the wings could be fitted to the fuselage the roots had to be filed to an angle to give the correct dihedral, this aircraft had a quite marked amount of dihedral. To get this right I found that it was a good idea to lay the fuselage upside down and to fit the wings so that the tips just touched the building board, this is without the fin and rudder fitted of course.

When it came to fitting the transparent cockpit items I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to remove them from their moulding over run. They are in two pieces and they went together well and fitted the airframe well. I used white glue on these transparent items.

So far so good, or that was what I thought, in fact I had forgotten to weight the nose.

And so to the painting, I sprayed the underside RLM65 blue but I then realised that masking the underside with the undercarriage in position was going to be very difficult. In fact I broke both undercarriage legs; I would advise painting the model before fitting the undercarriage.

I then sprayed the upper surfaces RLM71, I did not spray the panels that are shown to be RLM70 as shown in the instructions. The reason for this is that I have a number of photographs of the JU287 and I can not see these colour changes on them. I am not saying that the instructions are wrong, I am sure that Miniwing have got their information from some where, but I can't see them on the photographs that I have so I haven't incorporated them.

Conclusion

Overall a relatively simple model to build, and an unusual subject that stands out in a collection. It would be quite an attractive aircraft if only it had a retractable undercarriage, with this change it would make an interesting 'what if'.

Thanks to Miniwing for the review kit.