The Little World

I was idling though a hobby shop that has few aircraft – they specialise in figures and games – when I remembered that they sometimes have cheap airplane kits. I think they are stocked as a sop to the shoppers rather than a serious attempt to earn money…but I am prepared to be condescended to if it means cheap new models.

Not disappointed. The Zvezda model of a Lavotchkin 5-FN caught my eye. It had lurid box art, two sets of decals, and a cheap price. It sang to me, and the novelty was that it sang in Russian – my first Russian model. Oh, I had built a Ukrainian ICM Chaika before, but Ukrainian is not Russian…now is it…?

Well, I like the boxes and instruction sheets that give me Cyrillic as well as English writing, as it allows me to try to translate what I see. I fail, but it will get better with time. Note the sealed box and bag. You gets what you paid for.

You gets it in fairly swirly styrene in a deep Russian green colour. The parts are well-cast and the clear canopy is really clear. I was delighted to see that they did not forget the pilot – I don’t know many tiny Russians so it would have been difficult to recruit one on short notice.

Note that the Russians are smart enough to cast their propellers in one piece and not compel people to try to make decent ones from separate blades and hubs.

The decal sheet is an unknown quantity. I will opt for winter white camouflage but the last time I used the ICM decals I found them really fragile. I’m going to use one of the alternative scheme decals to experiment with before disturbing the rest of the sheet.