VBS Kunkadlo 1/72 Eduard

VBS Kuňkadlo is a Czechoslovak light single-seater sports aircraft. It was built by brothers Vladimir and Bohuslav Simunek between 1924 and 1926. The aircraft can be seen in today’s permanent exhibition at the National Technical Museum in Prague.

The kit of this aircraft in 1/72 scale was issued in a limited edition by the Eduard company, it contains plastic injection parts, decals (the peeling ones), and etched metal parts (most of them are for rigging). Photos from Petr Chmelik and Robert Blaschke are very useful during the construction, also Omask masks and a lot of your patience (it’s a really small model).

The build itself is not tricky, but there are unnecessary mistakes in the instructions, especially in terms of coloring the kit, both interior and exterior. The photos mentioned above come in handy here. Some refinements can be done, e.g. adjusting the seat (it is too thick), replacing the etched seatbelts with something thinner, replacing the etched spark plug cables with lead wire, and finally, figure how to complete the rigging. For the rigging, you can use the enclosed etchings, but I would say that you sweat at least when gluing them. You can choose a thread pulled from a heated plastic frame (used by a friend and it was quite good-looking), or you can use some elastic thread (my choice). First, I made some turnbuckles from a very fine wire and then glued the riggings from a latex thread. Since it was white, I had to repaint it and since it wasn’t circular, it’s recognizable somewhere as it is somehow twisted too. Today, I would use an elastic thread from Uschi van der Rosten, which is absolutely great (when I was building the kit, I was waiting for a re-stock of this, but it took too long). As I mentioned in the introduction, the model already contains “revolutionary” peeling decals – with a peeling topcoat. You don’t have to peel it, when you come to terms with silvering, stains, or imperfect adhesion. And if you peel them, you might easily peel off the decal or a part of a decal itself (like happened to me, half of the MLL logo on the wing was destroyed – I would like to thank Jarek Supik for the donated replacement!). For us, old-fashioned modelers, who enjoyed applying decals the most, this phase has now turned into an adrenaline lottery, and I’m not happy about that. However, I successfully completed the model and the aircraft is very nice. May one just wish we have more kits like this on the market, despite their minor shortcomings…