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Greg Kittinger
122 articles

AviationUSK 1/72 VL Myrsky II

December 27, 2016 · in Aviation · · 11 · 2.4K

I enjoy old kits and unusual subjects, and this one fit both bills! This was an old AviationUSK bagged kit. Soft plastic, not a lot of parts, vac-formed canopy (which I'm not a real fan of), and butt joints. It also had engraved panel lines, which allowed me to give it some dimension, but they were pretty deep/wide gouges, so you can see they are a bit "in your face!" I meant to use a grey panel line was for the blue bottom, but forgot, so it is way more stark than I had intended.

Construction was ok - thick solid-panel wings and gear doors NOT intended to be built wheels up provided the most work. I didn't do a thorough job of eliminating the join seams of the wings (so don't look close), and had to build doors out of styrene.

I added a pilot, and since there was no pitot tube, I added that with a combination of parts box oleo strut tipped with a small piece of stretched sprue drilled/glued into the oleo. I drilled out the gun ports in the cowling, and that was about it for any detail work.

Upper colors were mixed from Vallejo acrylics (scale black and a green), and under color was MM mixed light blue. Antenna was the Uschi scale rigging line.

Weathering was panel wash, then post shading with pastel chalks and Tamiya weathering set for the exhaust stain. Chipping with Aluminum paint. Finished with oil dot filtering, especially to break up the monochromatic look of the black.

The decals were actually very nice for such an old kit, although a bit transparent for the white circles (by the way, ALL of the decals with white circles, including the red cross and the emblems on the prop blades, were 2-part decals!). I realized too late that I needed to paint white circles beneath where those decals would go (at least the wing/fuselage emblems), and that was a bit of a mess to do after having already painted all the camo. The masks I made leaked a bit, so involved some clean-up, and when I applied one of the decals to the topside of a wing, the decal slipped off center a bit and I didn't notice until affixing the blue crosses! Oh well... what's a modeling project for me without one glaring mistake!

I should have tried to clean the vac-formed canopy more thoroughly after I sanded it into shape, as the paint didn't adhere very well and I had to touch it up after all the masking was off and I had it glued in place.

Overall I'm pleased with the result and the addition to my cabinet - looks nice between my obscure Avia B.35 and the Block 174 A3!

Just found a pic of the kit - added it to the images...

Reader reactions:
4  Awesome

11 additional images. Click to enlarge.


11 responses

  1. Nice lookin' finish, Greg...you must have an assembly line of parts for those display stands, huh... lol

    • Yep - about once every couple of years I go buy an 8' piece of lumber (one in each of the two sizes that I use), cut, drill, sand and stain them, and then I'm ready. Same with the plastic rod - buy them in 6' lengths, and cut them about a dozen at a time.

  2. Very nice and odd. Never heard of this aircraft. Off to the Google...

  3. Great job, I think I've heard of the plane but not the kit manuf.

    • Went out of business around the year 2000 I think. Short-run kits of mostly unusual subjects. I've got a few others in the stash: a Kawasaki Ki-32 Mary, a Fiat RS-14, and a Curtis SC-1 Seahawk.

  4. Nice build of an unknown soldier. That tail unit is unique.

  5. Interesting model Greg, well done.

  6. Nice write-up and neat work on an unusual and old kit.

  7. Fantastic job Greg. I've never seen one built. I like the one off type models too.

  8. Impressive build, showing your modelling skills !
    Thumbs up !

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