I've always had an interest in early jets and rockets, and in flying wings, so when this kit came onto the market it was a dream come true for me.

Dragon's Horton 229A is a rather complex kit. It contains all the internal framing for the fuselage, as well as fully detailed engines. It's designed with the intent that the wings and a number of access panels can be removed, showing off all the lovely detail. However, because of all this complexity, it does suffer from some unfortunate fit problems. Still, I wouldn't have missed it for the world. The 2 seat nightfighter/trainer 229B should avoid most of the fit problems as it does away with much of the frivolous detail.

Construction/Finishing notes:

• In particular, the front of the fuselage doesn't fit well to the rear top and bottom halves at the same time, due to the framework for the intereor pushing it out. This necessitated some considerable filling at the join points beside where the engine covers attach, and where the front joins to the cockpit sill. Because of this, and the slight variation in shape, it was impossible to have the engine covers sit properly in place, so I've left them as removed.

• I used the fantastic Reheat photoetch set for this kit. The one set provides parts to do both a 229A and a 229B kit -- talk about value. The details in the set were excellent, and set a standard that will be very hard to beat. Along with using the photoetch instrument panel, I also used some Reheat instrument decals for the dial faces. I have yet to find any that rival these for detail or for price, but don't even dream of trying to use them without a Waldron punch set or equivalent -- I didn't have one when I built this kit and I had to cut out each tiny instrument face by hand -- my hands aren't that steady.

• After seeing a note by someone on the rec.models.scale newsgroup (my apologies for not remembering who), about the DF loop actually being on the top instead of the bottom, I did some digging through my references, and while none of the prototypes carried a DF loop, the diagrams of the production version all showed the DF loop on top, confirming what my unknown benefactor had said. This makes perfect sense compared to other German a/c of the same era, almost all of them have their DF loop on top, rather than the bottom. This was one of the only changes I made aside from the Reheat photoetch set.

• The only other place I changed, or rather added things was to attach wires and cables to the back of the instrument panel (which can be seen quite clearly. I also ran some wires from the throttles and the gauges attached to the frame back towards the engines for a touch more realiizm.

• Almost all of the paints are Xtracolour, with some Model-Master Metalizers used for the engine detail. I like the Xtracolour as they are gloss and don't need a gloss overcoat before adding the decals.

• I used the kit decals, which were very thin, and somewhat unruly, with the addition of some swastikas from an Xtradecal set. The walkway outline that runs along the left side of the `fuselage' was a considerable pain to get lined up right -- especially with the opening for the engine. Aside from that, and some of the fuel filler markings which also had to be split, they went on reasonably well, and reacted quite well to the setting solution.

• Finally, to make the a/c look like it would if it were in service at the time, I throughly weathered it with liberal use of charcoal dust and washes around the fuel filler openings. I also added some drybrushing scuffs along the walkway, and other appropriate areas. At that point in hostilities, there wasn't time or manpower to keep a plane looking prinstine.

All in all, one of my favorite aircraft. I can hardly wait to do the 229B, as it combines my other big interest -- nightfighters, with all the ones mentioned above. Just about the ideal combination for me. ;-)

Not recommended for the novice, but for someone who doesn't mind lots of fiddley parts, it's a great kit.

Model by Brian MacNamara, photo by Lorenzo Vitiali (Thank Lorenzo!)