Hobby Boss 1/72 La-7

The Hobby Boss 1/72 La-7 arrived more quickly than I expected, so my apologies to HobbyLink Japan for my impatience.

Summing up this kit is quite easy ? if you liked the Eduard 1/72 La-7, then you?ll like the Hobby Boss kit, though perhaps not quite as much. In fact, Eduard may want to consider requesting some consulting fees from Hobby Boss.

The kit is designed in the by-now familiar Hobby Boss way ? one-piece fuselage, one-piece wings, with the whole fuselage underside molded with the wings. This allows more empty interior space than some of the first Hobby Boss kits, so detailing of the cockpit would be an easier task than was the case with the MiG-3, for example. The wings match the Eduard wings almost exactly in outline and details, although the Hobby Boss wings, being solid, lack the engine air intakes at the leading edge of the wing roots. The fuselage is also very similar, with only minor variation from the Eduard kit in the area of the cooling flaps on the sides of the cowling. The joint line between the wings and fuselage is exactly like the Eduard kit; so much so that you could use the Hobby Boss wings on the Eduard fuselage (if you removed the extended sections which form the fuselage undersides), and vice versa.

The trailing edges of the wings are disappointingly thick, and will take some careful work to make them thinner without damaging either the flaps or the wing joint reinforcement on the upper sides. All control surfaces have very excessive rib detail, especially the rudder and the elevators. The one-piece prop is reasonable, but the spinner, which is separate from the prop, has the same odd pointed-looking appearance as the Eduard spinner. Numerous other small parts are similar to those in the Eduard kit, too, although there is an error in the shape of the main landing gear doors which is unique to the Hobby Boss kit.

The kit includes parts to build both 2-gun and 3-gun La-7s. Decals are included for Kozhedub?s ?White 27? and Golovachev?s ?White 23?, though these are reversed on the instruction sheet, and both are shown as 3-gun versions, when in fact both were 2-gun aircraft. The decals look reasonably good, although the ?kill marking? stars provided for Kozhedub are printed in a pale yellow colour. The cowling faces show an incorrect understanding of how the cooling vanes behind the prop operated, but it seems that this was done to provide a way of mounting the propeller assembly while adding a bit of (questionable) detail. At least Hobby Boss didn?t represent these as fan blades, as on a FW-190.

The kit includes only a one-piece, closed canopy ? no open canopy option on this kit. A thin metal pin is provided as a propeller shaft ? at first I thought it was a small piece of tubing, intended to be used as a pitot tube.

In summary, I guess I?m disappointed in this kit. While I can?t say that it?s an outright copy of the Eduard La-7, there are many similarities between them. I was hoping for something completely new and different, but this isn?t it!

John