I have had this kit for... Well, I have no idea. Long. 10+ years for sure. Maybe even 15.

Heja was the Hungarian license produced version of the Italian Re.2000. The Royal Hungarian Air Force used the original Italian planes on the eastern front, but the Hungarian made planes were used for training only. There are only a few records of real missions. One of these happened in April 1944, when the allied forces started their strategic bombing campaign of Hungary. North of the lake Balaton lies a small grass airfield, still in use by a flying club. During the war, it was one of the airforce bases, used by Ju-86 bombers and later by various training squadrons. On 13.04.1944, a group of P-38 fighters attacked the airfield, and the Hungarian trainers scrambled to intercept the allied planes. The Hungarians were outnumbered, and their planes were absolutely not on pair with the twin engined Lightning. However, all of them managed to return to the base, some of them with some damage. One of these planes was the V5+39.

The colours of this plane are debated. On the photos, it looks like a single tone upper camouflage, but the typical version was a brown-green wave pattern.
The authors of the book “Hungarian Fighter Colors” also concluded that V5+39 had a single tone upper camouflage.

I focus now on my Po-2 build, but I should be able to finish this kit. Typical early Special Hobby, a lot of resin and fiddly parts.

Archive photos: Fortepan.hu under Creative Commons CC-BY-SA-3.0 licence

4 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Here’s a 1/72 project that I’ll be watching with interest, the reason is because I have the newer and bigger brother of this kit, the Regina 2000 early version box from SH. I must say that B&W pic is very good for details, especially weathering. Looking forward to see progress

Csaba, thank you for the info - great stuff! Only problem is that now I may have to get me one of these in quarterscale too. . . .

Re.2000 blueprints: how better can it get?
Love it!

Pedro, yes, it has riveting details on the drawings. I have been thinking about doing it on this model as well, at least on a simplified, 72nd scale compatible level. The book is indeed for rivet counters, but it is also a nice piece for my aviation book collection.

Oh yes, and the resin parts are indeed really nice, but actually incorrect for the Hungarian made versions. There were a few modifications inside the cockpit as well, mainly around the instrument panel.

Looking forward to this!

This has been the state of the kit for a few years. The fuselage and wings are assembled, the engine got a primer metal color, aaaand pretty much that’s all.

Today I worked a little bit on the preparation. I changed my mind, and decided to build the V4+81, an earlier Mavag Heja. There are better photos available and also a color profile has been published in the “Hungarian Fighter Colours Vol.2” from MMP Books.
I had to print my own decals for the registration numbers, and I also created a set of masks for the national insignia. Unfortunately Special Hobby got the proportions of the black and white sections completely wrong. I placed an almost 25 years old Propagteam decal sheet next to the kit decals, you can see the difference.

Probably not a big deal for most of the modelers, but that was one the first issues I spotted after opening the kit. The insignias on my own decal sheet are only for reference, I will use the masks.
The standard size of the insignia was either 80x80 or 100x100 cm, depending on the plane and the location. It seems that the Hejas had the smaller on the fuselage and the larger version on the wings.

1 additional image. Click to enlarge.