Zvezda 1:100 SB-2 High-Speed Bomber

A closer look at the Soviet SB-2 high-speed bomber in 1:200 scale made by the Russian company Zvezda. This box is an expansion for their "Art Of Tactic" wargame, but this model could not only be used for this or other ww2 games, the SB-2 was used in China and the Spanish civil war, too.

You may already know that I am no aviation expert, but this should be no big hurdle to give this kit a quick look:

The kit comes in two olivegreen sprues, there are no ejectormarkings and sinkholes, virtually no flash was found on the sprue. Here and there are some mouldlines on smaller parts to remove.

You can build this plane with open or closed landing gear.

As usual, there is no glue required to build this Zvezda kit, but if you want to, you can use normal model cement on the parts.

The next is the clear plastic sprue. It is made from pretty soft plastic and contains 3 canopies to finish the kit.

The final sprue in this box contains 2 parts to build a stand for the plane. It is included in every "Art Of Tactic" plane expansion. It seems solid and not too bad and would be a decent model stand if you remove all mouldlines and ejectormarkings.

The decalsheet seems like it is printed in the same good quality than the other Zvezda decal sheets I know. This one contains some generic numbers and Red Stars. I had no time to test them at the moment, but there should be no issues with them, but...

if you want to use decal setting and/or decal softing solution there is the chance that it may damage them, I had this issue with the decals from Zvezdas Hawker Hurricane (next Saturdays plane) when I used decalsofter.

The instruction leaflet was easy to understand and after some minutes of minimal cleanup and some more minutes to build this kit, the plane was finished and looks like this:

I already have some ideas how to paint this thing, but I do not think this will happen this year. And, as usual, I will have to get some decals to make this version.

I have no idea how to rate this kit, and I can not say if this kit is accurate for its scale, but this may not only be useful for "Art Of Tactic" players.

Whenever you would need a early war Soviet, a Spanish civil war, or even a Chinese nationalist SB-2 bomber, you could use this one.

It seems that the ww2 Zvezda kits in Germany are cheaper compared to most countries, this costs in all of my favorised shops under 4 Euros.

Tomorrow we will take a closer look at another "TANKS" expansion.

Zvezda 1:100 LA-5FN

A closer look at the 1:144 Lavochkin LA-5FN modelkit made by the Russian producer Zvezda. This kit belongs to Zvezdas range of 1:144 modelplanes for their "Art Of Tactic" wargame. I got the Messerschmitt BF-109 and Ilyushin IL-2 kits some years ago, that I had a rough forsight what would be to expect.

But as usual, with no further words left, let us take a look at the content of this game expansion:

The kit comes as single sprue of green plastic, which is pretty hard and takes modelglue very well. The parts are casted without flaws, there are no ejectormarks which could be seen when the plane is built. If there is any flash, I did not see it when I built the kit. Here and there are some mild mouldlines which need some sanding.

This kit can be build either with opened or closed landing gear, whatever you prefer. I built this thing with extended landing gear. Building did not take much time and made no issues, all parts fit well and this kit could be built even without the use of glue.

The second sprue in this box contains 2 parts to build a decent stand for the plane. It is included in every "Art Of Tactic" plane expansion. It seems solid and not too bad, I think I will use it for an other model and I think I already know, which it could be.

Next is the clear part for the canopy. This is casted as solid block but since there is no way to add a pilot figure this does not matter. But a nonsolid canopy and the addition of a pilot figure would have been a nice feature.

The last thing to show is the decalsheet which contains some red stars and generic numbers. These were printed in good quality , as all Zvezda decals I used before, and they took only some seconds to detach from the paper when watered. They are not as thin as Battlefront Miniatures decals but their borders will not be seen with a final layer of varnish applied.

Once again Zvezda offers a nice model kit for a fair price. I do not see any issues with this kit, since this is a gamepiece, it is ok. Some panellines would have been nice a nice addition, but except for the canopy its overall quality and level of detail is ok.
If you want a "real" 1:144 modelkit I would not approve it, but with if you need this for wargames, get it, with some paints and decals this thing looks pretty fine.

The paintjob was inspired by the boxart and pictures from the LA-5 wikipedia page. I used only basic colors on it, no washes or weathering were applied, this thing was almost speedpainted.
Basically the model is finished but it needs a new and final layer of matte varnish, since the stuff I normally use gave a pretty rough surface. It is not as heavy as it seems on the picture, but its surface is really rough. I ordered some new matte varnish (normally I am using the Revell Aquacolor stuff but I had some bad experiences with it), I hope the new paint will work as supposed.

And would it not be nice to get better canopy pieces for this and other 1:144 Zvezda model planes?

15 years ago I was into slotracing and had some successful attempts to vacform the windowpieces of some of my cars to get less weight on them... I could try this for the Zvezda planes, should I do this again and would it work for this small scale?

The stuff needed for that is pretty lowcost, some basic materials for the vacbox and the frames, a heatsource, and a vaccumcleaner, all stuff that can be found in every household. Except for clear polystyrene sheets I should have everything ready, I think I could use Forex either.
I may give this a try in the future, eventually you could expect even a video for this, but this would be at the end of my list of ongoing projects (2020?), there is enough stuff with a higher priority to do first.

One of that are one or two posts about colors, pigments and all that stuff. I got some more or less useful new things which I would like to show to you.

1:144 Zvezda IL-2 Stormovik

Pictures of my recently finished IL-2 Stormovik from Russian producer's Zvezda "Art of Tactics" range. The build went fast and without any problems. It was primed and basecoated by airbrush, pictures of it's unfinished state can be found in the post below. The final details were added with the brush.

Since I could not find the original decal sheet in the chaos of my modelling desk, I had to improvise. The numbers were taken from a Revell tank kit, and the red stars were taken from an 1:72 IL-2 kit, they may be a little oversized.

At the moment I am working on a bitsrecycling project. Maybe I will write about that in the later evening.