My first 1/33rd airplane

[rockpaperscissor]

I've completed my first 1/33 airplane build - Yay! I wanted to do a simple plane for my first, and this old Maly kit from 1962 fit the bill perfectly. There is no interior. In fact, there is not much detail at all. The fuselage shape resembles an La-5, so that was good enough for me at this point. This is a Maly scan which I downloaded from their archive site, so at least I didn’t have to deal with 45 year old Maly paper, which must be as brittle as a mummy by now.
The model has only 2 pages of parts - another thing that drew me to it. I cleaned up some of the worst color registry problems with photoshop. I eliminated the Polish AF insignia from the cowl - the color registry was just too bad for me to repair. I printed the file to fit on letter size paper, so it's a bit smaller than its published 1/33rd scale- it measures out at 1/40th now. The uneveness of color in older Maly kits caused by their weird paper translated into a sort of mottled appearance when I printed it out on modern paper. I kind of like the look.



Typical of Maly kits, the fuselage segments are butt joined. The first 3 mated perfectly. The tail segment is a hair larger than it's predecessor, and it has a twist, despite my being very careful to match all the formers to the centerline. Due to this twist I had to rotate the vertical stabilizer a bit to keep it vertical. This defect is hidden pretty well by the elevators, so I lucked out there.



The wings went together easily, but I should have measured them at the centerline where they meet up, because it turns out they didn't match very well. Unfortunately I didn't discover this until the left wing was already glued in place. I had to increase the rear centerline length of the right wing about 1 mm so it would mate with the left. It left me with a white strip to touch up with blue paint. There was also a pretty large area on the underside of the fuselage just behind the cowl that was green. I assumed this was a mistake and painted it over with matching (kinda) light blue paint.



I had a little trouble with the canopy. There is an internal former which made it rock back and forth on the fuselage like a seesaw. I removed the former, and then the canopy fit fine, although not centered very well.



To get a smoother look when building the cowl, I eliminated the forming strips and edge glued the rings very carefully. I colored all edges as I built the model, but after assembly I still had to touch up here and there with acrylic paint for a better look. I made a simple antenna from thread stiffened with Crazy Glue.



I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, and I learned a lot. I'm inspired to try a more complicated airplane now, and am awaiting delivery of a Modelik Yak-17 from the Paper Model Store. I’ll get to build an interior with that one and experience making a clear canopy, while avoiding construction of a complicated radial engine.

Sorry about the poor quality of the photos, but you get the idea.
Regards,
Don

[member_3]

Mighty fine job for a kit that age! You should really enjoy building something a bit more "state of the art".

[Gharbad]

Very nice job!

[B-Manic]

Great job. The mottled skin is interesting.

[CMDRTED]

Excellant first! Good luck with the Jak-17. We'll be waiting for an encore!

[dansls1]

Nice job - looks clean. Looking forward to seeing more of your builds

[rockpaperscissor]

Thanks for the kind words of encouragement fellas. I'm hoping to have Yak in hand on Monday. I've never seen a build or kit review of Modelik's Yak-17 so I don't know what to expect with this one. I know from building armor kits by Modelik that fit problems are not all that unusual on some of their models, but who knows, maybe the Yak'll be a well designed, trouble free build.
Regards,
Don

[GreMir]

Originally Posted by rockpaperscissor

...This is a Maly scan which I downloaded from their archive site...

I'm not aware of Maly Modelarz kits being downloadable from any archive site. I could be wrong of course...
LOK, the publisher of Maly kits offered old models on CDs...

[ct ertz]

Wow...I think I have this plane downloaded from one designer or another. I am going to have to do this one, yours is too cool!

[cdwheatley]

Outstanding work Don, you should be very proud of this one . Look forward to seeing your Yak, I'm sure it'll be just as good if not better (if that's possible ) than this one.