Arado 96 ...

Arado 96 was the main advanced training plane of the Luftwaffe. An extraordinary design, pleasant to fly, was still producing after the war in Czechoslovakia and France for a while.  
Moreover, a graceful bird with a distinctive Arado empennage lines.

Special Hobbies in 1/48 kit is a real pleasure to build with a crisp cockpit details and a tinted vacuum formed canopy with a very real look.

Despite the bored green tones paint scheme, the model became in an absolutely attractive subject in the shelf.

Hansa Brandenburg W.29...

This is the Eastern Express 1/72 kit. A little gem indeed. Easy to build, excellent decals.
An eye catcher in the shelf.

Albatros D.V...

This is the Eduard 1/72 kit, a marvelous representation of this great machine. I prefer to model the Theo Ostermann mount, to avoid the typical green and mauve or the lozenge wing colors.

The level of detail is proper to Eduard standards, easy to build and beautiful schemes to choice.

Do-17E Airfix 1/72 old fashion kit...

The Dornier 17 or the "flying pencil" was the most advanced bomber in the world when it was presented in the International Military Aircraft Competition at Zürich, Switzerland in 1937 and faster than any fighter produced at that time.

This plane with the Ju-88 and He-111 was the symbol of the air power of the new German regime.

Consequently, Do-17E (E models, was one of the early versions equipped with BMW diesel engines) was one of the first kit produced by Airfix at the beginning of the sixties. I was keeping one of this kits from 1968 aprox in a forgotten box in my mother's house. I recovered it in 2005 and after a lot of considerations, I decided to construct the kit in a pre war scheme.

Today, Airfix is showing a healthy business present, up to dating its old kit portfolio. Every body says that the new molds are a marvel and congratulate the company for their efforts.
But, the old mold is not bad at all, one can do a very acceptable subject spending little time.
The most surprising thing for me was to see that decals worked pretty well despite being fully yellowish and craqued after all those years. As always, the swastikas was borrowed from another decal sheet.

Needless to say that I'll buy the new kit and put the models side by side to compare the look of both subjects.  

In future post, I'll compare this kit with the extraordinary Revell Do-17Z.
 

 

 

Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa...

The Ki-43 was the aircraft selected by the Imperial Japanese Army for fighting and attack duties instead of the Kawasaki Zero selected by the Navy at the beginning of forties. This was an extraordinary plane, dependable and maneuverable as the Zero was. The only criticism was about its light armament and the lack of protection for pilot and fuel. But, at the beginning of the Pacific War this did not seem to be a problem in attention to capabilities of allied fighters and bomber at that time. Moreover, the training of the pilots was superb and unrivaled.

But, the concept of agility as the overall point of view became obsolete in just a couple of years. This, and the inability of Japanese industry to produce machines in big quantities as the pilots schools to supply the increasingly level of experienced pilots loses, seal the fate of Japan in the war.

This is the old Fujimi 1/48 scale kit of Ki-43II. Good level of details, perhaps a little exaggerated in the rivets representation, by means of little holes in fuselage and wings, but the effect is superb in the shelf.