1/72 Anigrand Arado Ar E.581-4

by Sean Carter

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Paraphrased from the Anigrand Craftswork website:

"In 1943, Arado began a work on the Ar E.555 Amerika-bomber project. This flying wing configuration was thought to be the best design to meet the requirements of high speed, heavy load-lifting and long-range aviation. Due to the design acceptance by the Reichsluftfahrt Ministerium (State Ministry for Aviation) in early 1944, the Arado design team scaled down the same configuration to design a smaller size fighter version, the Ar E.581-4. It was a single-seat fighter powered by the single HeS011 turbojet engine. The delta wing with the twin fins were based on the same design as the Ar E.555 bomber.  In the fall of 1944, the Reich had been depleted of design resources and concentrated their facilities on the production of existing fighters.  Arado was ordered to stop all the new projects, which included the Ar E.581-4 fighter."

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This is my first experience with Anigrand.  If you like their subject matter (mostly X-planes and lesser-featured aircraft), I would highly recommended them.  The detail is good for a kit of this size (fits in the palm of my hand), and finishing it was about as simple and fun as model building gets.

The whole build was a breeze, using cyanoacrylate glue for assembly and gap filling.  It's an all-resin model (except for the canopy), but all the parts are sturdy and well cast with very little flash.  Paint was MM Dark Green, Flat White, Flat Gull Gray and a mixture of various metallics and flat black for the details.  The kit decals were nice and laid down without a problem.  I finished it off with a sludge wash for the panel lines and pastels for the exhaust.

Total build time was a blistering (for me) 3 days, which in the end yielded a pretty decent first foray into resin kits.

Sean

Photos and text © by Sean Carter