1/72 aircraft

I started the build of the Hummel (“bumblebee”), Siebel’s eye-catchy sports airplane design last autumn and recently returned to it after a long pause. This shortrun model kit doesn’t look too inviting in the box, but surprisingly the build was really not that bad.

Alois Šmolík’s design of Letov Š.20 was a standard fighter plane of the Czechoslovak Air Force during the 1920s. Its demilitarised version, which was utilized by the Hanácký flying club in the Moravian city of Olomouc between 1934 and 1937, is presented by me and the Kovozavody Prostejov manufacturer.

At the beginning of 1943, the Germans captured two Yaks-1b and immediately began using them for reconnaissance and diversionary actions. The Germans acquired another machine on May 11, 1943. It was White 2, the plane of the commander of the 148th IAP Cpt. Leonid Smirnov. The machine was almost immediately involved in actions against its former owners. I was so fascinated by the story of the Cpt. Smirnov’s machine, that I decided to build a scaled copy of it.

František Novák, Josef Hubáček, and Petr Široký, three of our excellent aerial acrobats, first introduced themselves during an army airshow in the year 1936 on Prague-Kbely airfield. They were flying three specially camouflaged aircraft: Avia BA-122 OK-AVE, OK-VIM, and OK-VIL.
In the air, the group was always flying in such a formation, that the color scheme of their planes created the Czechoslovak flag, tricolor in order white-blue-red.

Fast and furious, these words could describe not only the result but the Macchi M.C.72 development process as well. This graceful aircraft was developed in 1931, directly for the Schneider Cup floatplane race. For a modeler interested in the Golden Age of Aviation, this is one of the essential types 😊.

Kaman UH-2A Seasprite is a rather conventional helicopter with a single main rotor and a tail rotor. It had been used by the US Navy since the 1960s as a rescue and multipurpose helicopter. Later versions were developed for anti-submarine purposes. In Vietnam, Seasprites were used in a combat environment. While piloting one of these machines in a rescue mission, Lt. Clyde E. Lassen earned the highest US military decoration, the Medal of Honor.

For my debut on 72insight.com, I selected my latest completed kits from Arma Hobby: PZL P.7a and PZL P.11c. As for the pre-war air force, what Avia B.534 means for us, PZL fighters represent for the Poles.

If you are interested in aircraft from World War II, you have certainly come across the Caudron C.714 fighter. Few people know that the path to the construction of this light fighter led through a long line of similar-looking sports machines from the Caudron-Renault factory. Its typical blue color and graceful shapes enchanted all fans of interwar aviation.

Polikarpov I-16 type 10, also known as Mosca (Fly), flown in 1938 during the Spanish Civil War by Eduardo Claudín Moncada. If you want to build a decent model of a Spanish I-16 in 1/72, you need to backdate a later version. I don’t mind, as I enjoy such conversions.

The build of Arma Hobby’s Hawker Hurricanes was a pleasant surprise for me. I really enjoyed those OOB builds.