Heller's Ju-52 is apparently the best on the market, despite its age. The kit includes optional engine cowls with different exhaust arrangements to model the AAC.1, as well as a plug for the dorsal machine gun location, and a different type of rear cabin window.
The interior is fairly well detailed. I simply added belts to the seats. The main cabin features stringer and longeron detail molded into the sides below the windows, and all the bulkheads feature good corrugation detail. This creates a problem in that the forward cabin bulkhead (the cockpit rear wall) has two large ejector pin marks interrupting the corrugation detail. The bulkhead can't simply be reversed, as there as radio detail on the other side, and the dorway framing will interfere with the fit. Since the bulkhead is quite visible through the windshield, and I didn't want to lose the corrugations, I tried a quick fix. I took a small piece of aluminum foil slightly larger than the ejector pin mark, embossed it with the corrugation texture over a different section of the bulkhead, and used CA to glue it in place over the pin mark. When doing this, be careful not to crush the fragile texture of the foil. The resulting detail was a bit less well-defined than the surrounding area, but looked much better than an ejector pin mark. This bulkhead proved troublesome later, when it interfered with the fit of the port fuselage side. The trick was to file out a small notch halfway up the wall, and a second notch at the base, to clear the molded-in details on the fuselage sides. Once this is done, the fuselage goes together quite well, with the bulkheads providing good stiffness. Consider leaving the bottom panel off until after the wingls have been glued to their roots on the fuselage. By doing this, you can eliminate gaps in the most visible areas.
The kit engines are well detailed. They are molded in four parts, consisting of a cylinder bank, exhaust collector ring, pushrods and nose casing, and a heat diffuser plate (?) that mounts infront of the cylinders. The pushrods fit pretty well, although the part is very fragile. I used thick CA to fair the rod ends into the rocker covers on the cylinders. The trickiest part is joining the exhausts to the cylinders. Each engine has a different arrangement, so be careful. The instructions only show one of the outboard engines, and the drawing is not very clear on how the whole thing fits together. The centre engine also presents difficulties. Each cylinder has two small flat areas molded into the rear corners (at the back of the rocker covers). By studying the parts, it would seem that the exhaust stubs on the collector ring should be glued to the larger flat area, which works for the outboard engines. Based on the drawing, however, the arrangement for the centre engine would seem to be the opposite. Neither location seems to give the correct position for the centre engine exhausts, which I believe should be at the same height on either side of the fuselage. Further problems arise in attaching the cowls to the engines. The outboard engines have small stubs molded to three of their cylinders, which mate to depressions on the inside of the cowl halves, in a very flimsy arrangement. The centre engine seems to merely float inside its cowl, with no visible means of securing it!
Once the fuselage is together, the rest of assembly goes quite well. Minimal gaps are evident at the wing roots, though a large gap resulted at the joint of the underside of the nose to the centre wing panel. Be careful filling here, as the nose lacks strength in this region, and it's easy to pop the seam. I attached the flaps, ailerons and elevators prior to painting, which resulted in me knocking them off several times! I would recommend leaving the elevators off until the tricolor is painted on the tail. I painted the tail and anti-glare panel prior to painting the base colour to avoid the need to mask over the metallic finish. I expected problems with masking on the corrugated surface of the rudder, but I used Tamiya 6 mm masking tape and had no problems. For the finish I used regular Humbrol aluminum (should that be aluminium?), not the Metalcote version. All photos I've seen show well-weathered, non-polished finishes. To break up the monotony of the finish and accentuate the texture, I used a wash of Tamiya German grey thinned with rubbing alcohol. By varying the intensity of the wash across the wings a more interesting, irregular, finish is created.
Decals are provided for two Luftwaffe Ju-52s and one AAC.1 operated in Indochina. I have an old issue of the kit, and the decals have yellowed considerably, so that I doubt they can be salvaged. Decals Carpena's Indochina 1er Partie set features an AAC.1 of GT. 1/64 Bearn at Bach Mai in 1950. In any case, care must be taken to ensure the decals settle into the surface detail. I had a hell of a time getting the Carpena decals on. All the tail markings disintegrated on me, and resisted all attempts to put them back together. The other markings seems to react poorly to Microsol and failed to adhere. I ended up using thinned Krystal Klear to stick the decals on. In fairness, I didn't gloss the model, partly out of haste, and partly out of a conviction that the microscopic smoothing provided by a gloss finish would likely not overcome the macroscopic roughness of the corrugation on the kit. After touch up of the most destroyed markings, it was on with the engines and cowls, which worked half decently when I glued small shims to the ends of three cylinders spaced at 120 degree intervals on each engine. If done right, this provides a push fit for each cowl, which allows some adjustment to get the alignment perfect.
References on the AAC.1 include Avions German Aircraft in French Service Volume 2, and Crosnier and Guhl's L'Armee de l'air en Indochine.