Warpaint; Zvezda 1/144 aircarft

      Here are the previously reviewed 1/144 aircraft models from Zvezda. I confess to being to lazy to dig out my airbrush and being too busy to take them to my buddy's house who isn't too lazy to set up his airbrush. I brush-painted them. Not the best job ever but you will get an idea of what they look like in the flesh.

      I can happily report that the decals are very good, thin with a very small surrounding film. The Soviet marking did suffer from register problems the red star being slightly off-center on the white background. I painted my JU-87 and ME-109 for service in the North African or Italian theaters rather than the Eastern Front.

the group shot, they compare well size-wise

Building the Zvezda 1/144 Lagg-3, IL-2, Stuka and Me-109

I was going to do these all as separate items but there is so little to report I decided to lump them all in together.

As I have found with prior Zvezda kits the fit and finish was near-perfect, only the slightest trace of mold-lines to remove. I did cut away the locating pins as I intended to glue them rather than relying on the snap-fit to keep them assembled. I must confess that I was amazed at how tightly these models fit, I have built models in MUCH larger scales that did not come anywhere close to the tightness of fit that these kits display. Well done Zvezda!

First the ME-109; the only thing that was less than perfect was the fit of the retracted landing gear into the opening provided in the wing. I had to do a little bit of trimming to get the part to fit in place. As all of these were going to be "flying"  models I removed the propeller blades from the spinner.

further info and more pictures after the break