Christmas came early this year for me when I received the email that this beastie was available for review. I am incredibly thankful to Kinetic Models for providing this kit for review and to the review corps higher-ups for trusting someone brand new to the group for having faith in me to not only build this thing, but in a timely manner to boot. It is a re-kitting of the Vintage Fighter Series kit released in 2008. I won’t say the ride was completely smooth…but it was a fun ride regardless.

The Kit

The kit consists of five light grey styrene sprues and one clear unit. Many parts, especially on Sprue D, are listed as not to be used. Some bombs and racks are also provided on Sprue G, but there is no reference in the instructions as to which variants carried them. More good fodder for the spares box.

The parts are well molded with very little flash, although the window openings required a little bit of trimming. Concerning the window arrangement, there is apparently another version of this kit with a straight row of rectangular windows, but this one had four square and four round windows, plus some oddly shaped windows by the cockpit, and, of course, the pilot’s windshield. There is adequate interior detail, including a complete cockpit, some rear cargo compartment detail, including radios, a seat, and several cameras. There is even a machine gun mounted in a ventral position. I can’t imagine why this was installed, but I included it in my model

History

The PZL P-23 Karas was one of the most important combat aircraft in the inventory of the Polish Military Aviation prior to the outbreak of World War II. Designed as a three place light bomber and reconnaissance type in the early thirties, and powered by the Polish-built Bristol Pegasus radial engine, the p-23 was placed in production in time to be available during the German invasion in 1939. Numerous units were equipped with the P-23A and P-23B versions, and these operated in the light bomber and reconnaissance role during the time that Poland was defending itself against the Germans. Later, when the Russians issued their “stab in the back” invasion, most of the surviving P-23’s were flown to Romania, where some of them soldiered on until the end of the war. A few were also exported to Bulgaria before the war, and these were redesignated P-43A due to a change in engines.

This part 2 of a three-part review of Mission Models paints.The Clear Coats

Shortly after releasing their second round of paint colors Mission Models released three clear coat products to protect the paint once it has been applied to a model. The Clear coatings are Flat Clear, Semi-Gloss Clear and Gloss Clear.

All clear coats are mixed with the Mission Models thinner and depending what you use the clears coats for, the thinner proportions mix is varied, I found 30% thinner to the clear worked best for me. The Polyurethane may be used with the clear coat as it is with the paint products. Let the clear coats dry for minimum 3 hours and they are ready for applications of any masking material.

Spraying the clears are done by setting your airbrush air pressure to 10 to 15 psi and applying the clear coats in light multiple coats.

The clear coats are compatible with all the decal settings solutions that you would normally use on your projects.

For as long as I can remember I’ve always painted the outside of my canopy framing the interior color first and then painted the exterior color overtop of that. This ensured that the interior color showed through the canopy. But there was always one thing that bothered me a little bit, the color was always glossy. Well Eduard has finally fixed that with their new line of TFace Masking sets.

This particular set is designed for the FW-190A series of Eduard models, including the A-8/R2 Rammjaeger. The masks are made of the infamous Kabuki tape so they are flexible and very easy to use. There are instructions to show you which masks to use where, including which is the inside masks and which are the outside ones.

Placing the masks is fairly easy but care has to be exercised when adding them to the interior as there are no panel lines to follow. I recommend that you add the interior masks first and then the exterior ones. Placing the exterior ones is easy enough.