A short while ago I discovered the International Plastic Modellers’ Society. A group for plastic modellers. Originally I signed up to get a discount on a high end spray booth but then found out that the local group met relatively near me and now I’m on a slippery slope that saw me by 3 model kits at a local swap meet and dig out another I’d picked up last year on a whim in Hobby Lobby.

That Hobby Lobby Kit is still destined for something more wargame adjacent (stay tuned!) but for now I thought I’d write up a review / work up of another of the kits:

The AVIA B.21 by KP Plastikov Model is a model kit from 1981. (Source) Although it was seemingly reissued a few times, the kit I have seems to be one of that original launch. This kit was actually a freebie thrown in with the other two kits I bought at the swap meet (SeaQuest Deep Ocean Transport from Monogram and a Swordfish Mk.I from Frog).

The Avia B-21 was an interwar recon plane from Czechoslovakia. It was a small biplane generally fitted with twin Vickers machine guns although there were unarmed variants popular for racing. KP was a Czech model company through the years of Socialist Czechoslovakia, eventually folding in 1996 and briefly revived in the early 2000s. It makes me happy to be working on a Czech model of a Czech plane, it has a nice sense of symmetry to it.

The kit itself is pretty basic; a couple of white plastic sprues, a clear plastic display stand, instructions and a decal sheet. The cast quality is pretty basic and there is some definite slip which is unfortunate given the number of struts the model is made of. The smaller parts are also pretty short on detailing – the cockpit dash has some nice detailing but the machine guns and joystick are little better than sticks.

I’m really using this kit as a method of practicing more careful assembly and clean up before moving onto kits that I care more about. Some of the things that I am working on with this kit are cleaning mould lines and sprue connection points, seamless joins and scribing in detail. I’m also going to end up doing some minor kit modding on the project as I replace some of the struts with styrene rod. I am not intending to really push the boundaries on painting the kit nor will I be attempting to strictly adhere to any existing paint schemes. If I can easily source some fairly accurate paint lists, I’ll try and use them but the focus will be perfectly clean assembly.

The first step was to start clipping. Normally I try to do this relatively quickly and the result can be stress marks and divots in the plastic. This time I’ve been clipping with extra nubs attached to the parts to sand down after – this is a very normal practice but because I typically have reasonably good clippers – I am prone to taking short cuts.

My ability to assemble the model was pretty limited at this stage. With a vehicle like this it makes sense to paint the wings separate to the body of the craft as they’d otherwise they make reaching many other parts awkward. Additionally the cockpit is virtually impossible to paint, fitted inside the body of the plane is inaccessible fully assembled so will be painted separately. These assembly stages have to wait until an initial level of painting has been done. I also left the struts off for now. I will actually assemble these parts before painting but I’m going to investigate my styrene rod options to replace the poorly cast options on the sprue.

One last thing to note before signing off for this post – the parts that I have assembled have been glued onto parts of the sprue. Many people will paint parts directly on the sprue, and there is some merit to that – it allows you to easily paint in subassemblies without handling or losing parts however it results in needing to touch up connection points and makes mould line clean up very challenging. By clipping, cleaning and assembling – the model looks great. I will then take the part that is going to have to be glued to another part of the model (or hidden from view) and attach the sprue at that point – giving me both access and control.

Next time – I’ll hopefully have the cockpit painted and next stage of assembly complete.

– Raggy, signing out