Rumors of my demise are greatly overstated. The blog and I are not dead, just overwhelmed by the hectic pace of the holiday season. To start the new year off in grand style I decided to build the complete selection of 1/72 Polikarpov I-15 series that I had stashed in The Vault. These would provide aircraft for the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Spanish Civil War, The Nomonhan Incident, the Winter War and the early days of Operation Barbarossa. While the kits come from two different manufacturers (and thus demand separate builds) the painting process will link up nicely and I shouldn't spend too much time watching paint dry during this exercise.
First seeing the light of day in 1995 the Encore kit was originally released by ICM, the different versions on the box-cover matter little as all the parts for all the versions come in each box (all being molded on the same sprues). By modern standards these kits are primitive, requiring a lot of clean-up of mold-lines and putty on the gaps. Counterbalancing that are the very good quality decals that are usually found in Encore kits, which is happily the case here. The Aviation USK kits, circa 1992, are frankly crude, parts molding and fit are dodgy, and the instructions are scarcely more detailed than Mesolithic petroglyphs. Pretty much all that can be said is that building them is easier (slightly) than scratch-building. On the flip-side the decals are excellent.
