LET L-410 UVP-T 1/72 Gavia

I bought the Turbolet as a 10-year-old boy in 1998 as a hot new item. It looked good for its time and I immediately started working on it enthusiastically. However, my enthusiasm soon waned and when I was assembling the wings to the fuselage, I said enough…. The L410 went close to the ice and almost ended up in the yellow trash can for plastic. Over time, it sank into the depths… every time I moved, I remembered it, reminisced about it and put it away again.

At the end of last year, Pepa Skalický announced a thematic club building project “Czech Manufacturer” in the Prostějov Plastic Modelers’ Club. The Czech Air Force is not in my interests, so I was thinking quite desperately about what to build so that I could participate in a joint thematic building project. A Czech manufacturer… I would like a Czech machine, from a Czech manufacturer of kits, ideally in Czech markings, I was thinking…. then I remembered. I have the old L410. Yes, but where is it? I found it and finished it after 26 years.

The 410 is built entirely from the box. For the build, I chose the UVP-T version with the number 0926. While searching the Internet and looking for documents, I came across a mention of the Military History Institute, where I learned that this particular machine took part in the SFOR operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it was damaged during the return from an operational flight, which turned out to be so serious that the aircraft was taken out of service after a technical flight to the production plant in Kunovice.

The photos clearly showed the SFOR markings on both sides of the rear fuselage. Of course, the Gavia kit did not offer this text, and I could not find any suitable decal sheet that I could use. Because I wanted to have the Turbolet built in the markings that corresponded to its last days in service, we decided to draw the text, cut it out on a plotter and spray SFOR over the mask.

You can probably imagine what the unfinished Turbolet looked like, dust deposits, what wasn’t lost was broken off. So I took it all apart again, stripped it of its paint and started over. The build went pretty smoothly in the end, you need to prepare the parts carefully, try to assemble them without the glue. You can’t avoid putting putty and cutting, but nothing that can’t be solved with today’s high-quality model-making tools and aids. The biggest challenge was the connection between the wings and the fuselage, where it just doesn’t really fit. I drilled wires into the wings and embedded them in the fuselage so that I could really lean on them while sanding the connection.

I used MRP paints from the Czechoslovak Air Force range. I switched to MRP paints from Gunze a few years ago. I really like them.  In my opinion, these are the best colors a modeler can use. From several photos and as recommended by colleagues who were around military turbolets, I left the surface slightly glossier. For the final, I used MRP semi-gloss varnish.

Actually, it turned out quite well in the end. Perhaps only the landing gear is worth mentioning. If someone reaches for the original model from Gavia and doesn’t use the 3D printed parts that EDUARD offers in its kit, don’t forget to shorten the chassis legs. It takes about 3mm for the Turbolet to sit pretty low, as it should.

In the end, I’m glad I didn’t throw the Turbolet away. It’s his turn and he made me very happy.