Lydia Litvyak’s Yakovlev Yak-1b “White Lily of Stalingrad”

Yakovlev Yak-1b tail code “White 23” from 73th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment was flown by Lydia Vladimirovna Litvyak.

She was the first soviet female fighter pilot to shoot down an enemy aircraft, total victories was twelve solo kills and four shared kills in 66 combat sorties.

This 1/72 kit is a beautiful kit from Arma Hobby. Molding is sharp and crisp. Cockpit is nicely detailed. Surface detail of the fabric is superb. The fit is perfect.

One great idea I first saw in this kit is the instruction sheet include a template to cut your own canopy and wheel masks.

There are few improvement to be made. The canopy is one-piece so get your razor saw ready. The Radiator molded closed. The canon barrel need drilling which I promptly mess it up and replace it with stretch Q-Tip. But overall the kit is highly recommended.

Aeroflot Heli-Taxi : Ka-18

Kamov Ka-18 was a civil derivative of the Ka-15M developed for heli-taxi and air ambulance duties, featuring a redesigned fuselage with a four-seat cabin and a hatch in the nose for loading a stretcher.

The prototype took to the air on 13th October 1956 and a total of 111 aircraft were built at Factory # 99 in Ulan Ude-Vostochny. Ka-18 remained in Aeroflot service for nearly 20 years.

This 1/72 kit is a Eastern Express rebox of Amodel kit. Typical short-run kit – all the parts have flashes and nothing is at a right-angle. Cockpit is non existence. The fuselage need to fix the warping. The rotor hub is quite detailed consisting of dozen parts but flashes cover almost all of it and need to redo with a stretched sprues. The decal disintegrate as soon as it touch water.

I would not recommended this kit but if you really want 1/72 civilian Kamov, there aren’t many choices.

Amelia Earhart’s Little Red Bus : Lockheed Vega 5B

A nice little 1/72 kit of a Lockheed Vega 5B from Special Hobby. The kit is MPM’s tooling of Vega 5 with extra resin part to make it 5B. Unfortunately in my kit the resin rudder is a little warp. It’s short-run kit but a very nice one with crisp sharp molding on both plastic and resin part. The decal is printed by Cartograf which is lovely.

Since it the parts are for normal Vega, you will need fill in the windows yourself so here’s my take on sculpting stretch fabric from putty.

The only problem I have with this kit is the landing gear. It was sitting way too tall and I did not see it until I start gluing things. Lots of rework to get it to sit nice and stumpy.

Overall nice little kit of a very red plane :)

F4F-3 Wildcat

A simple 1/72 kit from HobbyBoss. Kit is very simple, containing no more than a dozen parts. Wings came in one pieces. the fuselage pieces contain cockpit and rudder. This make a very quick build. The overall detail is good but there’s a lot of work need to done too. The wings are from dash-4 version with bits and bobs for folding wings mechanism, drop tanks and 2 additional .50 cal guns. The cockpit is empty except seat and stick.

Scratchbuild Cockpit

de Havilland Vampire T.11

The Airfix kit comes with a crisp sharp molding. The panel lines can be described as “trench-like” but overall very nice kit. The decal is printed by Cartograf which is a plus since you gonna need it for all the day-glo stripes.

Mig-17F “Fresco”

Airfix 1/72 Mig-17F “Fresco” is a beautifully molded kit. Parts fit were excellent except the wings root and the intake. There are improvements to be done to improve the accuracy. Wings angle are few degrees off, Wing fences is too thick, wrong ejection seat. To name a few, but overall it does looks like Mig-17F.

I really like that the kit comes with perfectly sized oil drum to prop-up the tail in case that you forget to put the weigh in the nose.

Westland Wyvern S.4 – “Operation Musketeer”

A 1/72 model kit from Trumpeter of a Westland Wyvern S.4 of the 830th Naval Air Squadron, British Royal Navy, During The Suez Crisis, November 1956.

This a nice kit with crisp sharp molding. The panel lines is very fine. Only a few around control surface that are too shallow. The decal is good but the whites are thin. You will need to paint the white before applying the decal. The invasion strips is not on the decal sheet.

The kit came with very detailed parts for contra-rotating propellers gears that are unfortunately hidden in the nose cone. Cockpit is very detailed, made from dozens parts.

MINI 4WD – Toyota Hilux Surf SSR-G

Original Mini 4WD car released by Tamiya on January 23, 1996.