1:72 Heinkel He-280 canopy airbrush mask

The first jet fighter to get into the air

The Heinkel He 280 took off under its own power in March 1941 and so became the first aircraft designed from the start as a jet fighter. It had two engines under the wings, a nose landing gear at a time when landings were normally made on a tailwheel, and it was the first aircraft in the world to carry a compressed-air ejection seat. In January 1942 a pilot used it in an emergency and survived the accident. Even so, a competing project won the contest and Heinkel was left with just nine airframes built.

The prototype's window

The glazing consists of a windscreen and a hinged section with prominent frames of the kind that tend to be coarser on prototype machinery than on production aircraft. At a small scale this is an area smaller than a little fingernail, and yet it is the one the eye uses to judge whether a model was built with care or skimped.

When to lift the film

The best moment comes as soon as the paint loses its shine but has not yet gone fully hard. At that point the stencil peels away with a sharp edge and does not pull the finish up with it. Leave it on the model until the next day and the edge will fray, and the repair will take longer than the whole spraying job.

A small part, a big difference

A model of a prototype stands or falls on the cleanness of its glazing. The other surfaces tend to be smooth and single-colored, so the viewer's eye has nowhere to turn and heads straight for the cockpit. That is exactly why it pays to give the small window more attention on these machines than to the whole camouflage. Keep the leftover pieces of the sheet, as they will come in handy when repairing a bleed.