1/72 La-5 Decals from PrintScale

[John Thompson]

Hmmm - this just showed up on Scalemodels.ru; possibly released in honour of the new 1/72 La-5 from Prop&Jet:
http://postimage.org/image/23ahijjac/

The Scalemodels people are now discussing its accuracy, although to me, it's a must-have item anyway; scroll down a bit:
http://scalemodels.ru/modules/forum/viewtopic_t_2645_start_420.html

I am curious about the use of yellow ink for some of the markings; also, the appearance of what I'd expect to be white looks greyish. They've either used silver ink like AML did on some of their decal sheets, or (more likely) it's just an image manipulation to make the white areas more visible against the background. I expect (and hope) the Scalemodels crew will give this one a thorough analysis over the next few days.

John

[John Thompson]

After looking at the artwork for this decal sheet at Jadar Hobby, I guess I'm not as excited as I was - most of the colour profiles in the instructions were lifted directly from Wings Palette, without corrections!
http://www.jadarhobby.pl/print-scale-72011-lavochkin-la5-172-p-23977.html

Compare, for example, this profile of Merono's brown and green La-5 with the instructions, although PrintScale tried to save it by printing little bars of the correct colours off to the side:
http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f/336/1/2/5

Here's the WP profile for Maresiev's "White 33", which I think by now is thoroughly discredited as being wrong and possibly not even Maresiev's aircraft; note that the WP and PS drawings are exactly the same with regard to the tones of the colours:
http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f/336/1/6/42

Here are two profiles of Kharchenko's "21", Summer 1943:
http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f/336/1/0/11
...and Winter 1942 - 43:
http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f/336/1/0/11_b1
Both options appear exactly as shown, including oversized spinner, in the decal instructions.

Here's the donated La-5F of Leonid Utesov's "Jolly Fellows" jazz band. I do like this one; it could be enough to get me to buy the sheet, but again, the profile is copied directly from WP:
http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f/336/1/3/54

Evstigneev's La-5 "White 02", both sides, just as reproduced by PrintScale:
http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f/336/1/3/54

I could keep going, but it seems like the options on this sheet are questionable at best without further research to confirm the original sources of the profiles presented on Wings Palette. 

John

[mholly]

John,
I have a Printscale sheet "Over Khasan and Khalkhin-Gol" based on Kondratiev's book which looks quite well-researched.
I'm not however impressed by decals themselves. They're are dead-flat implicating the application difficulties. Some stars are in
rather suspicious shade of red (brownish red). I noticed that this company is fairly prolific in releasing interesting sheets but if they base
them on Wings Palette it's a bad news. This source cann't be taken seriously if one cares for higher degree of historic accuracy.
Look how they represent AMT-11/12 colors, ridiculous. Very disappointing from a Russian company!
Cheers,
Mario

[John Thompson]

Hi Mario; in the case of the Khalkin Gol sheet, I suspect the credit goes to Kondratiev in that case. I'm not trying to condemn PrintScale - I doubt that my comments would ever reach them anyway. Any VVS GPW 1/72 decal sheet is welcome as far as I'm concerned, even if it needs some caution and extra research in using it.

Regarding the discussion on Scalemodels.ru, unfortunately it got derailed by someone asking about differences between the LaGG-3 and the La-5 before the decals got a thorough review. There were one or two comments which did identify some further problems, though -  one criticism was that the donation text on the "Jolly Fellows" La-5F should not include red. The photo linked below seems to show the text having the appearance of very worn white (or aluminum) paint; perhaps the worn areas were interpreted as red by the profile artist. I've always assumed this La-5F was brand-new at the time of the presentation ceremony, but it seems that the aircraft saw combat service before that time. Another photo, as well as the two profiles on the WP site, shows combat victory markings on the left side of the aircraft.
http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f/336/1/3/54_a3

The other thing that bothered me was that most of the profiles in the decal sheet instructions are not just inspired by the WP profiles, they're images taken directly from the WP site. This is particularly obvious in the case of the odd shading or colour tone variation visible in the case of the supposed Maresiev aircraft, "White 33". Since I don't have the decal sheet and its complete instruction pages, I don't know if any credit was given, either to Wings Palette or to the original sources of the profiles. I'm not raising copyright issues here, I'm just saying that PrintScale apparently took the profiles as being accurate and went ahead and used them as is (although for some reason the "31" bort number on one of the other aircraft, which is shown in the WP profile as black, has been changed to yellow; this also was criticized on Scalemodels.ru in the belief that black was correct. Other than that revison, the instruction sheet profile, again, appears to be exactly the same).

John

[Walker]

After looking at the artwork for this decal sheet at Jadar Hobby, I guess I'm not as excited as I was - most of the colour profiles in the instructions were lifted directly from Wings Palette, without corrections!
http://www.jadarhobby.pl/print-scale-72011-lavochkin-la5-172-p-23977.html

Compare, for example, this profile of Merono's brown and green La-5 with the instructions, although PrintScale tried to save it by printing little bars of the correct colours off to the side:
http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f/336/1/2/5

Here's the WP profile for Maresiev's "White 33", which I think by now is thoroughly discredited as being wrong and possibly not even Maresiev's aircraft; note that the WP and PS drawings are exactly the same with regard to the tones of the colours:
http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f/336/1/6/42

Here are two profiles of Kharchenko's "21", Summer 1943:
http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f/336/1/0/11
...and Winter 1942 - 43:
http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f/336/1/0/11_b1
Both options appear exactly as shown, including oversized spinner, in the decal instructions.

Here's the donated La-5F of Leonid Utesov's "Jolly Fellows" jazz band. I do like this one; it could be enough to get me to buy the sheet, but again, the profile is copied directly from WP:
http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f/336/1/3/54

Evstigneev's La-5 "White 02", both sides, just as reproduced by PrintScale:
http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f/336/1/3/54

I could keep going, but it seems like the options on this sheet are questionable at best without further research to confirm the original sources of the profiles presented on Wings Palette. 

John

Yes John, it seems you're right, a lot of mistakes. Maresyev flew to La-5F. According to some reports in the standard black-and-green camouflage, had a distinctive mark in a blue spinner and the front of the hood.
Inscription: "Jolly Fellows" was supposed to be white. Also there are questions about the images of figures and other inscriptions.