Polikarpov Po-2 1/48 ICM-Eduard, post-war civil version, Hungary - FINISHED

Started by Csaba · 222 · 2 years ago
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    Spiros Pendedekas said 3 years ago:

    Looking great from here, my friend @pikofix!

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    Csaba said 3 years ago:

    Thanks Spiros @fiveten and John @johnb They are much better than what I expected first, but mine are slightly larger and chunkier than the kit parts. It will look fine on the model.
    I am sure I won´t make rare biplanes for a while. This project has been ongoing for too long. 🙂

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    George R Blair Jr said 3 years ago:

    Looks great, Csaba (@pikofix). I hope you feel better.

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    Csaba said 3 years ago:


    I have just verified that the assembly jig is still correctly set. I can also feel that the whole plane will be quite strong once the upper wing is glued in place.
    The model has many small flaws, but I really like this livery. It is not the usual “Soviet/North Korean night bomber” Po-2.

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    Csaba said 3 years ago:

    Thank you George @gblair. I am doing better, but this bug knocked out the other family members quite badly. Hopefully everyone will be fine in a few days.

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    John vd Biggelaar said 3 years ago:

    Livery looks perfect, Csaba @pikofix

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    Spiros Pendedekas said 3 years ago:

    That you are a strict judge to yourself is an understatement, since your biplane looks already perfect, my friend @pikofix!
    Hope you feel better, as well.

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    Csaba said 3 years ago:

    I went through the archives again - this time the 1957-1959 issues of "Repülés", a Hungarian flying magazine.
    My idea was to look up any information about the original plane in the news, sometimes the local clubs reported when an old plane was successfully repaired. I did not find anything there, but I spotted the HA-PAX in the background twice.

    This photo was submitted by Tibor Janoska to a photography competition of Repules. The main subject was the Jak-11 in the foreground, but right in the middle of the frame, you can see the unique livery of HA-PAX.

    The second photo was found in a longer article about the first flight of the R-23 Gebics. It was designed by Ernő Rubik, a very productive engineer. By the way, his son was the inventor of the big 80s hit on the toy market, the magic cube.
    HA-PAX was the towplane of the Gebics on its maiden flight.

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    Spiros Pendedekas said 3 years ago:

    Those are amazing evidence pics, my friend @pikofix. Such great info would probably be unknown to us, had it not been your model building.

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    John vd Biggelaar said 3 years ago:

    Great pictures Csaba @pikofix.
    Your research delivers us some interesting information.

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    George R Blair Jr said 3 years ago:

    I am amazed at the number of photos you are finding of the plane, especially since it often isn't the subject of the photo, Csaba (@pikofix). I can't imagine how you search for such photos. Well done.

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    Csaba said 3 years ago:

    George, @gblair - it is the magic of internet. Many think that the internet is full with useless things, such as adult movies, cat videos, funny memes and similar strange stuff. But if a few motivated and determined people decide to use it properly, amazing things can born. One good example is this site, the iModeler. Great community, amazing models, lots of resources. Or there is Khan academy, a non-profit page helping kids learning all kind of different school topics, for free. When this pandemic started, I had a little bit of free time, and decided to dig into my family´s history. Without leaving my living room (abroad, 1000 km/600miles from my hometown) I was able to trace back 300 years in rural Hungary, all documented online. Many of those resources were available for free, others for a small fee (we are talking about less than 10 USD)

    You are right, it is amazing what you can find online in these days. The amount of information online is mind-blowing.
    I still remember the days, when my modeling references were old photocopies of even older photocopies from an old book, kept in file folders. Most of them were barely readable.

    I am lucky enough to know multiple languages, it helps a lot when looking for something online. I speak Hungarian, English, German from school and because of my wife, and not so good, but usable Danish because I have been here for a while. The good thing of knowing Danish is that it gives me a basic understanding of the other Scandinavian languages as well. This language mixture really opens up the possibilities for finding information.

    For these old Hungarian topics my main source is a non-profit photo collection of all planes ever registered in the country. These guys have a very active social media group as well, and share photos from other, less known photo collections.
    There is an amazing service digitizing old newspapers and magazines published in Hungary (that also includes the parts from the former Austro-Hungarian empire). Their goal is to publish all newspapers and magazines ever printed in the country. I think I pay around 50USD per year for the service, but it is simply an endless source of information. All digital versions are indexed, so a simple text search returns a lot of results, and you can scroll through the thumbnails very quickly before opening the main page. It is surprisingly fast to look up information, especially when you use filters to narrow down the hits.
    For these photos above, I went through a few issues of the magazine "Repules". First I did a text search of the type, opened up the pages, and read the text, but that did not give any usable results. The original plane was operating between 1957 and 1959, so I scrolled through the thumbnails of those issues. I only opened pages with photos of biplanes or gliders to see the details. The whole process took maybe an hour or so.
    The unique livery and limited service time helped a lot to find information. In a few days, I will add more of similar photos to my Zlin thread here on iModeler. I used the same resources and methods to find those photos.

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    George R Blair Jr said 3 years ago:

    Thanks for the info on your internet searches, Csaba (@pikofix). I have also been able to find a lot of good reference info online, but I am still amazed that you can find photos that are of another plane, but have your particular plane in the background. I also have done some digging online for family history, but only got back to the 1820s. At that point, my relative was a single woman with 2 children, and she is listed in the census as a farm owner. It seems pretty unusual to have a single woman who is a farm owner back then, and I assume she was married and her husband either died or took off, but I can't find any info. I am impressed by your linguistic skills. I used to have a passable knowledge of Spanish, but a lot of it has disappeared due to non-use. I had an exchange student in one of my high school classes several years ago who spoke several languages, and he said he couldn't count English, because he wasn't very good at it. It is sad to say that his English was better than the English spoken by my American students. I still have a large file of xerox reference material and many reference books on planes and ships, but I always go to the internet first, so I am not sure how much value they are.

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    Csaba said 2 years, 12 months ago:


    Finally, the model is out from the assembly jig, the upper wing and horizontal stabilizers are now mounted, aligned and glued (with minor incidents, I will need to touch up small areas with a paintbrush)

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    Tom Cleaver said 2 years, 12 months ago:

    This result looks really nice @pikofix. Very definitely out of the ordinary.

    You might want to re-check the "droop" of the elevators. Where they're at right now looks like the control cables got cut.

    Given the problems you had making the checkerboard decals, perhaps if you ever are crazy enough to do something similar in the future, you'll consider masking and airbrushing; although your decals certainly worked out here.