Sailplanes available?

[Jan Kytop]

Beautiful and interesting model, Leif.
Thank you for sharing.

[Dragos]

Soon a Romanian IS-29D will be available for free

[Leif Ohlsson]

Here is a copy of the instructions of the GPM kit of the Komar (nr 194 from 2002). I hope you will be able to identify a number of interesting features:



• First of all, notice that all parts are made up of ordinary building paper thickness. This includes the wingspars with ribs, cockpit inside skin plus details, and a full-length spine with formers attached, all in ordinary paper thickness (albeit doubled back on their own in some cases). In addition there are a few parts requiring wire support inside, mainly the wing struts and stab spars, plus the control stick. Add a small windscreen, easily shaped from transparent overhead plastic sheet or similar, and you are done.

• Second, you really should proceed in strict numerical order, following the numbering of the parts. In every instance where I deviated from this regiment, troubled followed! (On that note, I should add that the ”a” to ”k” fuselage fomer parts should be added to the spine ”1” as the very first step of the build.)

A few additonal interesting features:

• The very tip of the fuselage nose (part 14, I believe) is of excellent design. There is no need for those very annoying petal patterns.

• The speed brakes can be mounted in deployed fashion (I did), or just left as is for a cleaner wing.

• Ailerons are separate builds, as are rudder and elevators. Mount them at any desired angles of your liking.

• The cockpit coaming (13a) is made of a thin strip of paper, to be folded or shape over the cockpit rim. This really works, if you cut it up as shown in the instructions into separate smaller pieces.

I am proud to say that I made use of almost all the small parts of the kit. Aileron and elevator horns, however, had to be discarded after having been properly mangled by me trying to get them in place. And I don’t think I would have been able to replicate any rudder control wires at my smaller scale of 1/48.

For those of you building the model in it’s original 1/33 scale, I belive they are entirely doable, as Ostoja have shown in his build of the GPM Komar:



Next time, a bit of the simple recoloring process.

Leif

[Leif Ohlsson]

In a recent post "Flanker37" asked if there was a 1/32 or 1/24 version of the glider ASK-13. I happened to have downloaded a free 1/33 scale version of this glider a number of years ago. The designer is Marian Aldenhövel.

Marian's own webpage does not exist any longer, but at the time I downloaded both his ASK-13 and ASK-21 models. Since both were freely offered, and the untouched originals still hung around my hard drive, I see no objection to offer them here, in the proper thread for gliders.

Leif

[Leif Ohlsson]

For starters, here’s how all the parts of the kit (minus frames for wing spars, formers, etc) look like. I find it very satisfying that in 1/48 scale all of the parts will fit into a single A4 (or Letter) page:



An here’s what the formers & spars page look like, all frames into a single A4 (or Letter) page:



Now, substituting the blue color for red was easy. Just use the ”magic wand” tool and click on all blue areas. Save the completed selection as ”red”, and find as suitable red color you like. Bring out the saved selection and order it to be filled with your favourite red. All done so far - but the ugly grey color representing varnished fabric has got to be fixed as well, doesn’t it:



For the fabric, I tried something new for me, namely what is called an adjustment layer in Photoshop. This layer was inserted below the red layers, but crucially above the old blue parts with their grey fabric color. Having done that it was amazingly easy to just increase yellow hues, and decrease blue ones (I think it was, try it out for yourself, no harm done since you can just make the adjustment layer invisible).



The result may not be realistic in the proper sense, but it made me much happier than the original, and it was quick and easy.



Above is the kind of simple cover I made for my own sake, with a few basic data and facts about the original aircraft. Together with the parts page, the frames page, the instructions page, plus a decent three-view from the internet, rescaled to 1/48, this little pack makes up for a very nice personalized kit.

You can print out the two parts pages on the building paper of your choice, and the whole kit on ordinary copy paper. It is very handy to have around as reference when building. I mention this only as a tip for your own rescaling and recoloring. Regrettably, I can’t share the rescaled & recolored little kit since it is made from a printed GPM original - unless of course you already have that GPM original.

Leif

Incidentally, while researching the model I found out that the proper designation is IS-B Komar, not IS-8 Komar, as on the GPM cover. Apparently that is a common mistake. If you are interested in the reason for the designation, see the Wikipedia entry.

[Leif Ohlsson]

There is a deeper reason to model and write about Polish gliders like the Komar. Up until the outbreak of WW2 some 650 gliders designed by Antoni Kocjan (above) were built in Poland, among them the Komar (”Gnat”) that I just built, but also several others that can be built as paper models introduced earlier in this thread, like the Orlik (”Dove Hawk”), and the Sroka (”Magpie”), available as models in this series from GPM:



Despite the staggering numbers of gliders in Poland at the time, and the large proportion of them designed by Kocjan, this is still not the main reason to remember him. A quick look for Antoni Kocjan in Wikipedia reveals that he was a prominent figure in the Polish underground army and its resistance against the Nazi occupation.

Early in the war Kocjan was first wounded in an aerial attack, then caught and imprisoned at Auschwitz I. At this time, the camp was one of the very large numbers of ”ordinary” concentration camps (as opposed to the small number of specialized death factories built from 1941 to the end of the war). The number of such concentration camps are staggering in hindsight - tens of thousands is mentioned as a plausible number counting all nazi-occupied territories.



Above the German Auschwitz photos of Kocjan at the time of his capture and transfer to Auschwitz, at this point still looking well-nourished. When the Polish resistance was able to bribe Kocjan out of the camp he was in a very bad shape. Auschwitz not yet having been transformed to a death camp is a possible explanation for why it was possible to get him out of there at all.

As if this wasn't enough, Kocjan soon became involved in a most dramatic operation to capture key parts of the V2-rocket and deliver them in secret to the allies in Britain. The operation came about as the resistance got wind of an experimental rocket having crashed in Poland. The wreck was covered up by resistance members to prevent the German forces recovering the parts.

The operation eventually resuted in the allied forces diverting a British C47 Dakota aircraft to land in occupied Poland at night, on a strip prepared in secrecy by the resistance. The operation succeeded, and the priceless V2-parts were flown first to allied bases in Italy, and then back to England.

Unfortunately, Kocjan himself did not become a passenger on that plane. Instead he returned to Warsaw, where in the cellar of his old glider factory the resistance had built up a secret weapons factory, making hand grenades and other weapons.

This is where Kocjan finally met his death. Having been caught by the German forces after the failed Warsaw uprising, he was executed in August 1944, just one day after his 42nd birthday.

Apart from the Wikipedia entry already mentioned, there is a most readable article by Cliff Evans on Antoni Kocjan at Scale Soaring UK (SSUK) - which in other aspects as well is a gold-mine for all interested in vintage gliders.

[Rata]

Man, oh man. Here we are in our relative comfort and then you read what Leif has posted about Mr. Kocjan. Truly moving stuff. Thanks for sharing mate.

[Leif Ohlsson]

For those who may have become interested in the life-story of Antoni Kocjan, and his many aircraft designs, here is a rather fantastic Polish video on Youtube:


The speaker text is in Polish (I think), but for those who have read up on Kocjan in Wikipedia or in the Cliff Evans article at Scale Soaring UK, there will be no problem following the narrative provided by the flow of rather unique photos.





Amongst purely biographical photos you will find quick glimpses of Kocjan’s involvment with two early Polish light aircraft (above; ID anybody?), and several glimpses of the very lively 1930s gliders scene in Poland. You will also recognize Kocjan working on a fuselage former in the cellar glider workshop in Warsaw, where he and others only some ten years later would be making hand grenades in secrecy as part of the resistance against Nazi occupation.




A bit later you will see glimpses of different versions of Czajkas, i.e. early training gliders, much similar to the standard German SG38. There will be one very good photo of Kocjan in his own more advanced design Komar (”Gnat”, above), as modelled a few posts earlier. Then follows many other gliders; one of them perhaps a Mewa (”Sea Gull”, second above).





Then follows a series of excellent photos of Kocjan’s absolutely best design, the Orlik (”Dove Hawk”, above), easily recognized by its gull-wing configuration. Also mentioned are Kocjan’s design the Sroka (”Magpie”, last above). After the war (and Kocjan’s death) the SZD Polish glider industry returned to this design and worked a bit further on it. This later version is included in the GPM series of glider models.





Before the war, Kocjan also managed to design what is known as the first really efficient motor glider (above), with decent performance also as a pure glider.




After the outbreak of the war there is an intriguing image of Kocjan in British RAF uniform and a British C-47 Dakota in the background (above). Does this mean that Kocjan really went to England to learn how to fly this aircraft, and then returned to his work in the Polish underground army, only to be imprisoned in Auschwitz? I would really like to know the proper sequence of events here. Perhaps some Polish speaker could shed some light on this.

The video the continues with a lot about the V1 and V2 rockets, and Kocjan’s part in bringing strategically valuable parts of these back to the allied forces. And then some images depciting the Warsaw uprising (including the secret making of hand grenades in Kocjan’s old glider workshop, second above), and finally how Kocjan was captured and shot.

[Butelczynski]

I don't think that's Mr Kocjan in RAF uniform in that picture.His name isn't listed on "Cichociemni" list of those parachuted to occupied Poland but that list isn't complete and some names are still "secret" in UK archives.

Leif-thank you for bringing up Mr Kocjan and his story.Too many don't know what was happening in occupied Poland during war,some refuse to believe the extend of polish resistance and worse yet there is growing number of those accusing Poles of collaborating with Germans with no evidence of it and plenty of exact opposite .

[Leif Ohlsson]

Thank you, Butelczynski. No clue from the speaker text in the Youtube video, then?...

Leif