Revell 1/32 Ju 87B
By Gino Dykstra
Nothing much to report here. As an exercise, I wanted to see what could be done with this old warhorse of a kit without killing myself. I started by sanding off all the panel lines and those over-sized rivets, rescribing everything. Not as difficult as I'd expected. Second, I wanted the stabilizers at a more natural tilt, so I scribed those off along with those pesky half-moon pieces at the end. Ditto for the rudders.
I did some cockpit detailing -- nothing too fancy, as well as replacing the poor rearward-firing gun with some decent ammo cans from an old Airfix Afrika Korps figure set. For some contrast, I used a couple of drop tanks from the 21st Century Toys Bf 109Fs to make the long-range version, and scratched a wheel siren for the European version.
Irony of ironies, the 21st Century Toys version of this kit came out shortly after completion, and it had everything that I had done to the Revell kit and more! And at a price that even the old Revell kit couldn't compete with. Oh well. Still, it was a nice exercise, as I hate to just toss these old kits in the trash. And the snake on the Libyan version is certainly dramatic.
© Gino Dykstra
This article was published on Friday, September 27 2013; Last modified on Saturday, May 14 2016