Category: Soviet aircraft
-
Yakovlev 6 – Part One -The Orphan
I discovered this Yak 6 model sitting forlornly under a pile of junk in the storage room of the model club. There are any number of derelict kits in there – some abandoned half-built, and some just unwanted. The simple ones could be turned into basic trainers for young modellers, but the dreadful short run…
-
Stash MiG – Part Three – A New Finish
On an old article. The Hasegawa MiG 21 is finished according to the instruction sheet. It could not be supplemented all that much with the net as there were few pictures of the originals before they got blown up. But the model is an effective sketch in strong colours. The choice of duck egg green,…
-
Stash MiG – Part Two – The Brown Article
I am always a little chary of Hasegawa plastic. it is quite a bit more brittle than that used by the other makers like Airfix or the Czech firms. I appreciate the fact that it can be drawn to finer points, but I dread cutting things off the sprue trees for fear of crazing. The…
-
Stash MiG – Part One – Hasegawa Humour
I title this build as such because I am starting to see the way the minds work in Shizuoka City and it is more devious than you’d think. If you were going to bring out a 1:72 model of a MiG 21 – dear old Cold Warrior – what schemes and equipments would you put…
-
Pink Poles
Before you start to wonder if this has turned into a porno site, let me assure you it always was. But we were using code-words. If you didn’t get it, you weren’t the one the code was intended for. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, look at the two pink airplanes. They…
-
MiG 17 – Part Four- The A-Team Moment
I love it when a plan comes together… The Egyptian MiG 17 sitting at Schmattarim Museum Is not the same as the one at Hatzerim Museum. Not at all. There is no Arabic writing on the nose. The wheels are still Soviet Green*. And it has not totally faded out in the Negev sun. But…
-
MiG 17 – Part Three – Dam Those Wings
I have always thought that wing dams were an admission of error on the part of an aircraft designer. Yet they feature on any number of Eastern and Western jets – mostly the ones that have swept wings. You may know them as stall fences or barriers. They keep the air moving back past the…
-
MiG 17 – Part Two – Smarter Than The Average Bear
Look here, Prague. The Russians – crude stumbling peasants that they are…drunken, covered in ice and angst…can make a cockpit tub that fits into the fuselage first time. The tub is a precise moulding and the partitions that hold it in place allow both sides of the fuselage to approximate without gaps. It’s almost as…
-
MiG 17 – Part One – I Buy By Price
And I buy cheap. My trip to the hobby shop was for paint – of course I detoured into the kit aisle, and of course I looked over all the 1:72 offerings there. The shop is one that I rarely get to, so it may contain things not seen before. This was so, but while…
-
Petlyakov Pe-2 – Part Four – Yet Another Soviet Triumph
Pardon me if I start to sound a little cynical – I’ve been reading Soviet accounts of their air force in the Great Patriotic War. In various articles I’ve been told that three separate Soviet aircraft were the most produced planes of all time and won the war. The articles originate from within what was…
The Little World 