According to one of the more recent books on German camouflage, a color one could refer to as 'Lufthansa Grey' was frequently used on prototypes during the time that the Bf-109, He-112 and others were developed. Not having this, but having a color chip in the book, I mixed up something that came pretty close using Xtracolor paints. I then sprayed the entire airframe with this hybrid light grey scheme. The prop and hub were painted polished aluminum using Alclad II paints. I also painted the wheel hubs and the back of the prop blades black at this time. Then the small strip under the nose and the equally small bit on the right wing were painted steel as the instructions called for a dark metallic color. I chose not to model the option with the blue lower surface. It is also quite possible that my grey is too light, but it is done and it looks nice to me. I also painted the prop with polished aluminum on one side and flat black on the other. The spinner was done in a nice blue I happened to have already mixed and it looked close enough. The spinner seems a bit on the bulbous side to me as well, though I couldn't really tell for sure from the few images of the plane that are around.

Returning to the workbench to add on some more bits and pieces, I first brush painted the wheel wells with RLM 02 from Testors ModelMaster line of enamels. I also painted the tail wheel strut, main gear struts and inner gear doors this color. The wheels were black with weathered black tires. The gear legs had Bare Metal Chrome foil wrapped around the oleos. The main gear have these large circular bits at the end of them. They look like some sort of huge drum brake, but I doubt if the prototype had these at all. There are indentations in the wheels to accept a pin from the end of the struts, but those little nubbins got eradicated when I cleaned up the strut. The small oleo scissors were glued in place and the wheels glued to the end of the strut.

Once dry, the main gear was inserted into the holes in the wheel well and the gear doors glued in place. Those who are really into the 109 and want everything perfect will be wanting to replace the gear with parts from a Hasegawa 109 kit and make new gear doors. The ones with the kit are not like those on the prototype, whose doors were more semi-circular with no notches on the ends. Next the little etched aileron mass balances were glued in place after drilling small depressions in the aileron for them to fit. Etched brass just doesn't hack it for things like this that are clearly three dimensional. Not only that, but they bend easily. I've mentioned many times that some inventive aftermarket company who does things in either metal, resin or injected plastic would do well to make these things in many different scales. Anyone who does models that have these things can always use them to replace etched pieces or the regular injected ones that so frequently go missing or broken off.

I now had the aircraft basically done in terms of fitting bits on it. The decals in the kit are by Propagteam. These took an age to get loose enough to come off the backing sheet, but once they did, they worked very well. They were not as prone to tearing as other Propagteam decals. One thing, though. The tail band is way too wide for the kit. It may be that the tail planes are too high or the fin/rudder too short, but I ended up going to an Xtradecal sheet of swastikas that has a variety of sizes and a large chunk of red. I cut out the proper sized band and fit it on the fin. Unfortunately, all the white circles on the sheet were too large. I then went to a stash of geometric shape decals I have from back in the 80's. It has rings and circles in many sizes and colors. I chose one ring and one full circle that fit properly. Later, I added the smallest swastika from the Xtradecal sheet and it seemed to work fine. All these decals reacted well to my Solvaset.

The model was then sprayed with an overcoat of Future to keep the decals in place and the prop/spinner was glued onto the nose. Masking was removed from the canopy, a teeny bit of pastel used for exhaust and I was done!