Messerschmitt Me P.1092/3

One of the genre's that I like but don't get to model often are the experimental planes. They could be USAF or NASA's X-Planes or they could be the Luft '46 planes.  
In aviation, "Luft '46" refers to military aircraft that were under development in Nazi Germany, but failed to enter service (at least in large numbers) before the end of World War 2. This includes projects that were cancelled during the war, and occasionally real postwar aircraft derived from German research, such as the MiG-15. Most "Luft '46" aircraft are of advanced design, usually having swept wings and jet/rocket engines. 

From Luft'46.com:

 With the Messerschmitt Me P.1092/3 design, the design team made more changes to the P.1092. The cockpit was moved to the rear, where it was faired into the single vertical fin. The air intake was now divided into two intakes, located beneath the nose, and fed the single Jumo 004C jet engine. The landing gear remained more or less the same, and with the forward fuselage now unoccupied, a heavier armament of four MK 108 30mm cannon could be concentrated in the nose. This Messerschmitt design bears a resemblance to the later Me P.1106, and the same problems would have surfaced; namely, pilot visibility from the cockpit located so far in the rear. 

The model of the Me.P. is from the Co., Unicraft, out of the Ukraine. Unicraft specializes in exotic subjects such as experimental and concept aircraft, UCAVs and Luft '46. A number of years ago Fantastic Plastic was named as their exclusive distributor for the US and Canada. In a personal note that is no secret, Unicraft kits are not for the beginner as they usually need a little extra work to make them look good. Be forewarned. 

The box art

This kits came in about 12 pieces of a brittle tan color resin. There is a good amount of flash around some of the pieces and what looks like scratches in the resin on others.  Here's an example of some of the parts that need more work than usual. Thankfully the fuselage was in good shape.  This is supposed to be 2 wheel struts and a wheel. It seems that for these parts, the resin seemed to have foamed a bit - 

 The next thing that was immediately noticed was that the air intakes on the fuselage had no backs. When you put the two halves together, you could see right through. If nothing else, this needs to be fixed. I had to think about this.
That I came up with was to glue two sections of a soda straw to cover the the intakes. when the glue dried, the parts over the opening would be cut away and leave me with a curved tube in the fuselage - 

Shown is the length of straw from both sides. The black things are Liquid Gravity pellets that have been glue in the front. This in combination with hollowing out the rear where the pilot was to sit backward and I also drilled out the tail portion, in an effort not to make this a tail sitter.

I left the straws to dry for a day or two and then with a new #11 blade cut the straw away from the opening. Here the straws are cut away and the two halves are glued together- clamps are need as the fuselage halves are slightly warped - 

I had to add some Aves, to smooth out the front and back of the intakes, and it ended up not too bad. The front wheel well also had no floor, so I also used Aves to creat the floor.
 Taking care of the warped parts, a lot of Tamiya putty was used. The body is still not straight, but I'm hoping that's minimized when the canopy goes on.

While I was waiting for the putty to stiffen up and super glue to harden, I painted the pilot. It's from another kit. As I'm going to have to use a different kit's landing gear (I couldn't make the above one look nice and didn't feel like scratching one) I might as well borrow the pilot too - 

I looked up Nazi pilots and my guy came pretty close. So I matched up the colors as best I could. I know, you probably won't even see him once in the cockpit, under the canopy...
 
To end this session I glued the tail on and of course this too needed a lot of Tamiya putty, and LOTS of sanding. The tail had to be 1mm too narrow all the way around.

Thanks for looking. see if this becomes a silk purse in the next installment.