Aero L-39 Albatros - Eduard
A simple side-opening box. The rip on the side of the box was already present when I bought it (at a discount price), but the contents were complete and unharmed.
Fret 1. Very smooth and neat moldings but there are some sink marks on the fuselage parts.
Fret 2. The provided underwing fuel tanks and bombs will not be used.
The transparent fret. The two canopy parts were broken off in my set, but there were no scratches or any kind of damage.
I replaced the kit seats (the one on the right) with resin versions, which look quite a lot better.
Here you can see the comparison between the kit's seat and the resin version - the kit's seat is much too tall and would not really fit without some modifications.
The side panels of the Hungarian L-39's didn't have this fancy quilted cover that are molded on the insides, so they need to be sanded off. Here done on the student's cockpit and remains on the instructor's cockpit.
The instrument panel and side consoles feature some lovely raised details. but since I intend to use pre-painted photo-etched ones, I needed to sand them smooth. In the photo, the student's dashboard is already done, the instructor's one still remains.
Cockpit area cemented into the fuselage.
The turbine face and the exhaust is represented with parts sandwiched between the fuselage halves. On the real aircraft, the engine goes between these.
The Hungarian Albas had a very striking Soviet turquoise colored cockpit, including the center area of the dashboard, so it was all painted accordingly using Ammo Mig and Tamiya acrylics. BTW the red triangles on the headrests with the red strings are the covers for the arming of the ejection seats. If you depict an aircraft in flight, they should be removed.
Although not mentioned in the instructions, the nose cavity is filled with lead fishing weights to avoid a tail sitter.
Fuselage halves cemented together. Quite contrary to what I expected with an Eduard kit, the join is on KP level, so some filling and sanding is required. A few panel lines on the underside are lost in the process and need to be rescribed.
To give the wing pylons some location markings, a few holes need to be drilled out. It's all marked on the inside of the wings, so an easy job, as long as you remember to do it before attaching the wing halves. The are not really needed for anything but markings where the pylons should go.
Wing top and bottom parts joined.
Wings attached to the fuselage. Some dry-fitting and consecutive sanding is required for a perfectly smooth fit. Eventually I found that I needed to fill a few gaps around the wing roots with a small amount of dissolved Tamiya putty, wiped off with a cotton bud moistened with Mr Color leveling thinner, by which the putty stays in the gaps but does not mar the surrounding areas. Not a big deal and it is possible that I might have been able to avoid it completely with some more careful dry-fitting and fettling.
There are a few nasty sink-marks around the rear end of the fuselage, which needs to be filled with Tamiya White Putty and sanded smooth.
The two part intakes are nicely molded, but do not want to follow the contours of the fuselage. There are no panel lines here on the original aircraft, so the transition should be absolutely smooth. I solved it with some rather heavy filling and sanding, but I was not expecting that from an Eduard kit. In hindsight, it would have been easier to attach the intakes to the sides before the wings as it is slightly more difficult to access the undersides of the intakes this way.
Stabilizers added - a bit of dissolved putty is let to flow in the fuselage join so it resembles the molded panel lines.
Pylons cemented under the wings. Since the Hungarian Albas never carried anything other than external fuel tanks, and even those only on long distance ferry flights, I won't be adding any ordnance. Instead I just cemented on some random strips from styrene to represent some semblance of detail.
The undercarriage legs are only attached into holes under the wings. On the real aircraft, the bay doors were usually shut when the gears were fully extended, so on the model they are only represented as recessed lines. it definitely makes the assembly a lot faster!
The transparent parts are cemented on using extremely careful applications of Tamiya Extra Thin cement. The canopies are superbly clear with hardly any distortion at all, so I decided to add them in a closed state to keep the slick appearance of the Albatros. There are a few tiny gaps around the edges, but nothing that cannot be fixed with a tiny amount of dissolved Tamiya White Putty.
Brass pitot tubes from Master Models added - and the main assembly is hereby finished! Wheels, wingtip lights and one or two tiny thingies are left off for now so they won't be knocked off. Time to fire up the primer!
Model degreased with IPA alcohol, canopies masked with the excellent Eduard pre-cut masks and Mr Hobby Mr Masking Sol Neo masking fluid. The model is then sprayed with my favorite Stynylrez primer (H&S Infinity Airbrush, 0.4 mm needle, 30 PSI).
Panel lines enhanced with an application of black to be just barely visible under the final paintcoat later.
I bought the MRP pre-mixed paint set for the Hungarian camo, but after having tested them on scraps of plastic, I decided to revert back to my usual Tamiya acrylics, even though it means that I need to mix the colors myself. After some experimentation, I came up with the following recipes. The green can be mixed from XF-70 Dark Green with a little bit of XF-8 Blue and some white. The sand yellow is basically XF-88 Dark Yellow mixed with some XF-93 Light Brown. The underside color was somewhat elusive, but XF-23 Light Blue with a bit of white plus a few drops of X-23 Clear Blue and more drops of X-25 Clear Green seemed to do the trick. In the photo the Tamiya mixes are the smudges on the left, the MRP bottled paint on the right. As you can see, they are more or less identical.
Underside sprayed with my own Tamiya mix of duck egg shell blue. After a minute, the entire surface is generously oversprayed with pure Mr. Color Leveling Thinner. This thinner is so powerful that it actually melts the paint coat. As the thinner evaporates and the paint recures, it levels out beautifully, creating a flawless and silky smooth surface. It's a bit scary, but it works! Just remember not to overdo it so much that it starts to run. Also do not touch the paint for at least 24 hours (or as long as you can even faintly smell the solvent on the model), or you will get permanently embedded fingerprints.
Light blue underside masked off. The top surface camo pattern actually follows around the wings onto the underside a bit in a wavy, uneven line so the masking needs to reflect this.
Brown applied with the H&S Infinity airbrush and then oversprayed with pure Leveling Thinner to melt the paintcoat and eliminate any traces of orange-peel effect. It is very difficult in this photo to see if the hue is right or not, but it looks okay to me. The faded paint effect may look a bit overdone in the photo but should even out once the green areas are sprayed on and a gloss coat is applied.
The brown areas are masked off using Tamiya masking tape. I decided to do hard lines instead of the ever so slightly soft ones on the real aircraft as the transition area between the two colors would need to be less than one mm and it would not look very realistic in this small scale to use elevated masks.
Green sprayed on with great care to get a slight variation of the deepness of the paint.
Masking tape removed - an extremely saisfying part. Well, a tiny bit of overspray on the underwing pylons, but it's all super easy to fix!
Model brush painted with Alclad ALC-600 Aqua Gloss clear coat in preparation for the decals. I could have used an airbrush to apply the varnish, but the hairy stick method works just as well and with less cleanup afterwards. The varnish does not have to be perfect, it is just a utility coat to help with the decals - the model will be sprayed satin flat afterwards.
Applying the decals from HAD Models plus a few ones from my spares. The HAD decals are very thin and quite sensitive to touch, but when some Mr. Mark Softer Neo softener is applied, the decal film completely vanishes, making the decals look absolutely painted on. It's a pity that none of the white service stencils are provided. The only mistake I have noted is that the ejection seat warning decal is printed in yellow but should be red.
Some mild weathering added with various Tamiya weathering pastels, all surfaces carefully oversprayed with Tamiya semi-flat varnish, canopy masks removed and a few remaining doo-dahs added. And hereby I declare the project finished. Tada!
The finished model.
The finished model.
The finished model.
The finished model.
The finished model.
The finished model.
The finished model.
Комментарии
73 14 June, 06:54
Thomas KolbWhile waiting for some paints to arrive in the mail to continue my MiG-23 build project, I decided to do a very quick build of the Eduard L-39 in my stash. This kit is labeled as a "weekend" build, which might be a bit optimistic for me, but should still be a quick progress.
14 June, 07:14
ClementDo you already have a plan for the shades you're going to use? I found the L-39 classic camouflage very hard to get right. I hope you'll have more luck with it.
14 June, 17:32
ClementThanks @Łukasz, well spotted!
MRP-010 Brown Green ČSN 2250
MRP-013 Khaki ČSN 5450
MRP-027 Light Pastel Grey ČSN 1010
For those interested
15 June, 06:17
Thomas KolbFor the Hungarian standard camo, MRP has released an entire set, consisting of MRP-351 Brown, MRP-352 Dark Green and MRP-353 Light Blue.
18 June, 16:11
Thomas KolbYesterday I spent some time comparing the hue and tint of the MRP paints with my own mix of Tamiya acrylics (as described in photo 26 above), and found them to be absolutely identical. I also found the MRP paints much too smelly and aggressive and hard to adjust if you want to blend in slightly varying tones in panels etc. The Tamiyas can furthermore be used for extremely diluted thin filter applications, while the MRP are block solid.
19 June, 06:49
ClementWell done on those paints!
I agree with you, Tamiya paints spray great and don't smell nearly as nasty as MRP's.
19 June, 13:22
Łukasz GlińskiI see you mixed too much of this colour and used it on the background 😋
Lovely preshading, sth I don't have enough patience for
21 June, 10:31
CuajeteVery nice painting job, Thomas. Looks fantastic so far 👍
I recently saw that Edward has released the transparent parts of this kit as "L-39 Revised Canopy":
L-39 Revised Canopy (Eduard 7040Y, 1:72)
Do you know what problem the original transparent parts have?
24 July, 17:49
Thomas KolbCuajete, thank you! No, I wasn't aware of any issues with the canopy. To me, the version provided in the kit is good enough, it certainly looks correct compared with photos.
24 July, 19:53
NicolasI'm not sure, but the kit photos show onle the multi part canopy. The revised Canopy kit also has a single peace closed version.
25 July, 04:27
Thomas KolbNicolas, yes, you are right. With the new set you also get a closed canopy so the builder doesn't have to join the separate pieces together. I guess it makes for a simpler build.
25 July, 06:07
Nicolas@ Cuajete: I tried it direktly from Thomas' albums. There it works, but ther is a notice that comments are disabled.
26 July, 18:00
Moreno BaruffiniVery nice! This build reminds me that I started a similar kit more thas ten years ago, with a Czech camo and some decals already applied...Now It's om the "shelf od doom" ...Maybe something I'll retake it!
27 July, 20:07
Thomas KolbAnd with a little effort, the project is pushed over the finishing line. Photos will come soon!
17 August, 16:10
Mr DDone a nice job there buddy, l really liked the cockpit on this one, nice colour n details.well done...👍👍👍
17 August, 21:21
Thomas KolbMy dear fellow modelers, thank you for the congratulations. I really appreciate it.
18 August, 08:08
Album info
At the end of the 80's, Hungary received two dozen 15 years old L-39ZO trainer aircraft for free from East Germany (DDR). The aircraft were delivered by train in containers and were then assembled at the Danubius Aircraft Factory in Hungary with support from consultants from the Czech manufacturer. Twenty airframes were built to be airworthy and four were put aside for spare parts. The good ones were exclusively used for pilot training at the Air Force Flight Academy in Szolnok and were never equipped with any kind of armament as per the agreement with DDR.
The Albas (as they were called in Hungary) initially they flew in their original German two-tone green camouflage with yellow wing and fin tips to mark them as trainers, but in 1998 they were completely overhauled and eqipped with NATO compatible equipment. They were also repainted in the standard blue-green/sand camouflage, although one aircraft was later equipped with a super cartoonish "angry wasp" livery. This aircraft got the nickname "Zümi" (which can be translated as "Buzz"). The Air Force high command however didn't quite like this, so the aircraft was soon ordered to be repainted in the modern NATO style, air superiority gray livery. Finally, however this aircraft (together with another L-39) received a special and highly artistic paintjob with an inventive shark theme: "Cápeti" and "Cápali" (the Hungarian names of the main characters of the French cartoon series "Sharky et Georges"), with the front of a shark emerging from the standard camo.
During its active life span in the Hungarian Air Force, a few Albas were lost: in 1995, number 139 went down due to turbine failure, but the two crewmembers ejected safely. In 1997, number 120 encountered an engine stall, but the crew managed to get it running at an altitude of only 150 feet above ground and were able to bring the aircraft safely home. In 2008 however, the very same aircraft collided with the ground due to pilot error, unfortunately killing both the student pilot and the instructor in the back seat.
The L-39 soon became obsolete due to the old style technology not providing the pilots possibility to practice operating in a modern electronically interconnected battlefield. Instead the Hungarian pilots now receive their tactical training in the twin seater D version of the JAS 39 Gripen. The last of the Hungarian Albas flew in 2009 in a commemorative flight escorted by two Gripens of the Hungarian Air Force. One of the shark themed L-39 with number 119 can today be seen on display at the Aviation Museum at Szolnok in Hungary.
