The book goes into great detail of the development, service, variants and full history of a classic British Turboprop Airliner the Vickers Viscount. This aircraft has a special place in my heart as its one of the first aircraft I did interior design work on in the early 1980’s, so I jumped at the opportunity to review this. Also it is written by a very professional and knowledgeable author of lots of articles I have read and enjoyed before.

I found this book fascinating and made me aware of a lot of information I have never read before. This aircraft was a very successful aircraft and produced in greater numbers than any other British aircraft of this type.

The chapters on the genesis and development of the aircraft I found very fascinating as it told of the other aircraft that were in development and also how the Viscount nearly did not get off the drawing board. There is a bit about a jet variation of the Viscount including pictures that I was unaware of.

History

Nicely written on both English and Polish, this book provides the history of the German Albatros D.I through D.Va fighters in both German and Polish service. The Albatros was the replacement for the earlier Fokker Eindekker series, beginning service in mid 1916 until being replaced by the Fokker D.VII in 1917 and 1918. Most of the famous aces flew the type, including von Richtofen and Bolcke, and they operated the type successfully on the Western Front until outclassed by the British S.E.5’s and Sopwith Camels, and the French SPADs. After replacement, they were used in less important theatres of operation and as trainers. Many survived the war, and quite a few were spirited away to Poland, where they became one of the important types in the fledgling Polish Military Aviation, which used them effectively against the Russian Communists who were trying to expand into Polish territory after the end of World War I.

Fundekals is a newer company but the people behind them have been around the modeling scene for years. And they have a new business model. They are aware of the cost of decals and the current trend to have dozens of markings. They have decided on (mostly) one set of markings per sheet and a one-time printing and generally will not include things like national markings. And they do not include the instructions sheets which are downloadable from their web site in PDF form. And, that’s a good thing which you will see in a minute.

This sheet actually covers five sets of markings. Due to the size of the sheet, it makes sense to include five markings especially with no national markings on the sheet, just the markings specific to that plane. The five planes covered are:

Eduard has released a limited edition version of the L-39 release before. The main kit is the Special Hobby L-39 with the addition of resin, photoetch, masks and limited edition decals for two special version markings.

In the box is:

• 3 x light grey sprues (one varies from the illustration in the instructions)
• 1 clear sprue
• 1 film sheet
• 1 large decal sheet
• 1 mask sheet
• 1 photoetch detail set
• 22 x resin parts
• 1 instruction booklet

The kit consists of 3 main sprues; the sprues are very typical of Special Hobby product and are made from a soft plastic. The decals allow you to finish the aircraft in two different versions, L-39C RA1039K Aero Jet Club (Civilian version from Russia 2005) and L-39ZO Hungarian Air Force 2005. I decided that I would build the Aero Club one due to the nice looking Dragon decals.

Eduard Models has been releasing “Overtrees” and “Overlept” versions of their main boxings “Profipack” and “Weekend”. Let me cover the differences among the boxing types:

• Profipack boxing includes plastic parts, masks, pre-painted photoetch pieces, instructions and a decal sheet with typically 4 to 6 different marking options. Often a Profipack release has an orange band on top of the art cover.
• Weekend boxing includes plastic parts, instructions and a decal sheet with 1 (or more recently 2) marking options, but no masks, nor photoetch.
• Overtrees: you get onlyplastic parts. No decals, no photo-etch, no masks, not even instructions. The intention of this boxings is to offer a very affordable “extra” model to apply the un-used marking options of the nice decal sheet from the Profipack boxing.

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