Il-2 in 1/32

[Old Dog]

This is the Hobby Boss kit I finished recently. The kit goes together well but the instructions, decals and a few other items leave something to be desired. I used the Eduard Zoom set for the cockpit but found that some of the items were over sized as they would not fit based on photos or diagrams and in the end I did what I could with them, right or wrong. The rest of the kit was pretty much out of the box except that I added the missing armored radiator shutters, the center support on the intake trunking and the gear down indicators. My lighting washed out most of the shadow wash I used on the interior so it looks cleaner in the photos than person









The front shutters show here before the bottom color was applied, they are positional and I replaced the blank area that the kit supplied for a radiator with some 100 mesh brass screen.





I spent a lot of time trying to match colors, I have a set of FS595 color chips and found the exercise much more difficult than I imagined. The end result was not as good as I hoped, I couldn't seem to get enough gray in the brown and the dark gray seems a bit too dark to me but my color chip looked really close to black. Any way it is what it is and I'll try again next time. All the paints are Model Master enamels except for the dark gray which is Floquil. If you look closely you'll notice I forgot to unmask the landing light before the photo session 



















The only photo I took of the bottom was one done prior to finishing the kit...



I was disappointed in the decals both in their errors and missing elements but on the plus side they applied well and settled down with only a minimal amount of Microsol and I had no problems with silvering.

Thanks for looking ! Your comments and criticisms are welcomed !

[learstang]

Great-looking Shturmovik, OD!  The colours look good to me.  Evidently the AMT-12 Dark Grey was very dark, almost black, and your AMT-1 Light Brown looks good also.  This is one of the few built-up HB arrows I've seen.  I have one waiting to be built, along with the ski-equipped single-seater and the straight-winged two-seater.  I've already built the wheeled single-seater (I posted some pictures on Large Scale Planes, but I'm not sure I have here - I need to check that).  At any rate, excellent job!

Regards,

Jason

[Old Dog]

Thanks Jason ! If anyone is interested my inbox review of the kit and photos taken during the build can be found here. http://www.olddogsplanes.com/il2-3m32.html

[learstang]

Thanks Jason ! If anyone is interested my inbox review of the kit and photos taken during the build can be found here. http://www.olddogsplanes.com/il2-3m32.html

You're welcome, OD!  Nice site by the way, and the build article on the arrow is very well-done.  I've done something similar on the wheeled single-seater which I'm including in a book I'm writing on modelling the Shturmovik (not just in 1/32nd scale; my book applies to all the scales the Il-2 appears in).  The only thing I would add to your build is the VV-1 external gunsight.  I know the kit doesn't include it, and I can't recall if the Eduard exterior set includes it, but you should add it - it shouldn't be too hard (easy for me to say!).  One thing about those "aiming lines" on the windscreen; on the original aeroplane those are actually separate pieces of armoured glass, that were apparently laid down on top of a single piece of backing Plexiglas (at least with some Shturmoviks - with some, the separate pieces may not have had a backing piece of Plexiglas in which case those lines would have also been present on the inside of the windscreen).  

Best Regards,

Jason

[JP]

Nice, another big-scaler in here!  Very nice build.  Thanks for posting it here.

[Massimo Tessitori]

Hi Old Dog, Jason and JP,
nice model indeed, it is a pleasure to see it.
I have some small criticism: the alignment of the left wing gun barrel should be corrected; besides, the rocket rails included in the kit are of the type utilized before the fall of 1943, and I have seen them only once on an Il-2M3. If Hobbyboss includes these only, it is its error.

This photo shows them well. The gun fairing is different because this plane is from another factory, but the rails were standard.
I suggest to add the VV-1 external aiming device  on the nose too. I think that the model can still be corrected, the scratchbuilding is not very difficult.


Regards
Massimo

[Old Dog]

Thanks for the compliments. I'll see if I can work up a proper gun sight, not sure about the rails. I know the sighting lines aren't a good representation of the real thing but felt they looked better than nothing at all. As for the guns the kit instructions take you down the path to a 37mm cannon armed machine which I ignored until after assembling the wing, In fact I already had the first camo color on. The kit does include the guns and fairings but there is no mention of them in the instructions. I had to cut the slots in the wings for the fairings after the fact and fit the gun barrels to the inside of the fairings before gluing them on, that's why the alignment issue, not sure it's fixable at this point. I was building this kit under a time constraint or I probably would have done more to it in the way of weathering and detail.

Thanks again for looking and commenting !

[66misos]

Hi Old Dog,

very nice build. It has to be a seriouce piece of plastic.
I looked also at your web page. I like very much the way how structured kits are preresented. Really very good. I checked your VVS collection. I think the refference to VVS colors you use is not very popular here 

Regards,
     66misos

[Old Dog]

Thanks 66misos, I relied heavily on the information available here for my Il-2, any mention of another source on my website is due to my lack of time to update some of the old information. I only found my way here in the past year and still haven't absorbed all the great information available here !

There is a link to this site on my links page and in time I will get rid of the "other" references !

Thanks for looking !

Gary