What you get is the typical Hobbycraft offering : 3 sprues of light-grey styrene, one with parts exclusively for the Buchón, such as the fuselage, prop, cowl bulges, spinner, rockets, canons and their fairings and 2 sprues with Gustav bits and pieces (a spinner is included for the DB version).  The interior is fairly complete with pedals, trim wheel, and the engine-mounted cannon of the Gustav that you will have to discard, because RR Merlins never had such a weapon.

 The marking sheet is excellent, with markings for one natural-metal Spanish aircraft and almost all of the movie’s machines : Major Foehn’s red-numbered Hispanos, but curiously, Hobbycraft doesn’t give you the yellow numbers for Major Falke’s outfit, so you have to rely on white ones or get yellow ones where you can.  Another odd omission is the lack of chevrons to depict the squadron leaders’ personal airplanes and furthermore, stencils are not provided, but such sheets are easy to find for the 109.  One nice touch is the green stripes for the canopy framing, but the colour is somewhere between RLM 70 and 71.  And yes, the swastikas are provided, albeit in two pieces.

 The instruction sheet is better than what you can expect from Hobbycraft, with reference degrees, millimetre spacing for certain parts, and most of all, the aircraft actually looks like what it’s supposed to be on the sheet!  However, no interior colour references are given, so you will have to rely on research to get it right.

I started out the usual way, with the cockpit.  Not knowing what paint I would use, I watched the movie until I was convinced enough to paint everything Model Master Olive Drab.  The details were then picked out with flat black and everything was glued in place (save for the gun butt) and touch ups were made as necessary, along with light aluminium dry-brushing on the floor.  The cockpit was then glued to one fuselage half (disregard the “trim to fit advice” in the plan, I found it to be unnecessary) then was matched to its opposite.  Everything was then set aside for a while.

 The wings deserve a special treatment : before they are glued, you have to drill small holes in the bottom piece to allow the fixation of the rocket racks if you intend on building a Spanish Air Force version and you have to open the shell chutes.  Also, on the top halves, you can open holes to better install the wing bulges, but I didn’t and the fit didn’t suffer much.  Once the holes were dealt with, the wings were mated with the fuselage along with the stabs and the putty work started.

 The seams are not bad at all, but I always putty my aircrafts up with Tamiya Putty.  This one was no exception and  after everything was wet sanded, I primed the joints with Testor Combat Grey (little jars).  When I was satisfied with the results, I added the cowl bulges and the tail plane struts, but I discarded the machine gun tube thingies, since they look awful and are not really apparent if not totally absent on the movie aircrafts.  These lack any positive location pins, so you’ll have to rely on your eye to ensure that they are symmetric.  I glued the gun barrels without the fairings and the landing gear legs on, as the movie clearly show that the doors and the legs are the same colour. 

 Before gluing the spinner to the prop and the back plate, I drilled a hole in the middle of it since Buchón Bf 109 look alike all have this feature, but Spanish aircrafts in service never had it.  The interior of the spinner was painted flat black to avoid any transparency effects.  For the wing bulges, since I didn’t drill the hole, I faced a small challenge.  Where the heck to they go?  The plan is vague about it, but in the movie, when Major Foehn climbs in his machine prior to the first German attack, you can clearly see where they should be.  Also, I held the model before a strong light and marked the location with a pen.  Again, eye symmetry was used for proper alignment.  Finally, the radio mast was glued in place and the plane was shipped by road (literally!) to the paint shop.

The cockpit was masked and the entire underside and fuselage sides were sprayed with Model Master’s RLM 65, along with the wheels, painted that same colour (I have no idea why, because all my references show the wheels painted Olive Drab or RLM 71, but anyway, I like the look of it.)  After that, the sides and the underside were masked and the model was given a coat of Model Master RLM 71.  The plan is really good when it comes to painting the splinter, but I modified it for ease of painting : the top cowl has the demarcation line closer to the windshield and on the left wing (again, I have no clue why), the demarcation line is not at the wing root, but about a quarter of an inch out.  Once everything was properly masked with Tamiya tape, RLM 70 finished the job.  The spinner was given a coat of Model Master RLM 04 and it was time to complete the build.

 The exhausts are moulded on a plate that you glue right under the cowl bulges.  It goes along very well and I painted mine with Model Master Jet Exhaust, since the colour is almost like a brand new exhaust set.  At this point, the pitot tube was hand painted RLM 70 and the tip with Chrome Silver.  The small aileron weights had been glued prior painting, but they had been knocked off (Nein!) and I carefully glued them back on with superglue.  The propeller assembly was glued in place with white glue, the gun tubes were hand brushed Gun Metal and the aircraft was once again ready for the next step, decals.

My Buchón is one from Major Falke’s outfit, Weiss 2 (but it should be Gelb 2 to be exact, but I’m not going to fuss about it) and I used the kit’s decals, they went on perfectly, even without a gloss coat.  Take care when choosing which squadron insignia you choose, because the two movie squadrons have shields that are extremely similar.  Major Foehn’s has a swastika in it, but not Major Falke’s.  I had no problems whatsoever with the two parts swastikas and the large numbers with lots of clear film didn’t silver at all.  The only thing wrong I see with the decals is that the under wing crosses seem a tad large, but it’s not that bad and you can always find a replacement.