Me 163 kits and accessories

Stephane Colin's Me 163B model

Stephane Colin from France sent a report of his Academy Komet. Stephane considers the Academy model to be THE kit of Me 163B Komet in this scale. He reports that general assembly went without problems, and not much filler was used. Of course, lots of modifications and scratch-built components can be added to improve the model. He has done incredible detail work in the cockpit so far. Look and enjoy!

		Stephane decided to detailed the cockpit as much as he could, using the walkaround photos on this site. Except for the tank and the instrument panel, all the rest is rebuilt with plastic card and copper wire. The basic Academy tub is fitted with a new rear bulkhead, seat rails, tank straps, and piping. The headrest was remolded in a silicon rubber mold, with plastic melted in liquid glue.
Upper fuselage half added, showing sidewall detailing, with throttle, trim wheel and piping.
		Right hand sidewall, with thick oxygen tube, electrics switchboard, and elevon control arm behind the seat rail.
The cockpit tub was painted RLM66 gray, with nice weathering.
		Painted left-hand sidewall.
Painted right-hand sidewall.
		Painted detail parts.
The canopy was thermo formed on the kit part. A small hole was drilled on the front, the little window on the left was opened and I added a handle.
		The most difficult thing to rebuild was the armored glass. It is too thin and too small. I finally built it from 1 mm thick plexiglass sheet. The faceting was from very small pieces of very thin plasticard.
Inspired by the photos of the Me 163 at the Deutsch Museum in München, Stephane rebuilt the skid hinges with rod and plasticard, just to see if he was capable to scratch build this component.
		He also built the hydraulic jack inside the skid bay, but it can't be seen with the skid in place.
The tail wheel is rebuilt too, only the wheel has been conserved, the rest was built new.
		The model has been sprayed with air brush and Tamiya acrylic paint. At this scale it was not easy to apply the mottle camouflage to the fuselage.
The flaps / air brakes were built from thin plastic sheet and some rod.