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| There is a few model kits of this
beautiful little fighter. This one is a vacumformed kit made by Polish
company Modelland.
I bought it years ago, but the recent purchase of an excellent book "PZL P.24" (published by Wydawnictwo "Militaria") triggered a need to have one in my collection. The model comes in a plastic bag containing a styrene sheet with all the parts, one vacumformed canopy, small sheet of decals, A4 instruction sheet and a cardboard sheet with three colour side drawings of 2 aircrafts and a brief description of the type in Polish and English on the other side. The instructions consist of an exploded assembly diagram, which shows all the necessary steps and lists parts, which have to be made (gun barrels and strings for undercarriage struts). On the other side there are 1:72 scale drawings and camouflage diagrams.
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The construction is straightforward starting with a cockpit consisting of a floor, rear bulkhead, instrument panel and a seat. Although the main camouflage colours are given in English, colours for the cockpit and propeller assembly are only in Polish (silver and black are needed). Surface detail of the fuselage halves and wings is marked by little raised "bubbles" and a lot of sanding is required to get rid of them. This has to be done carefully not to destroy the raised details of the wings. I just made a couple of vacumformed models so far, but this one went together like a dream. Everything fitted perfectly!!!! There is a choice of making the model with or without wheel fairings. I went for the second option and also made the wheels slightly weighted. The engine comes in two halves and is a simple representation of the real thing. Engine cowling comes in two parts moulded together with the exhaust collectors. I cut off the end of the collector an made a new one from a thin styrene sheet (it is supposed to be an oval shaped pipe). Another addition to the engine assembly were elements of the engine mount visible in front of the engine. I made them from the stretched sprue. I also used the stretched sprue to make a new tail skid. Although the canopy is vacumformed it is rather thick and a bit cloudy, but when painted and glued over the cockpit opening it looks OK. There is an option to make either F or G version. In order to make F version cannon fairings have to be scratchbuild according to drawings included in the instructions. It is much easier to just make four machine gun barrels from a stretched sprue and make P.24G. The job was finished with antennas made from stretched sprue and painted silver.
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There are three painting options - two camouflaged and an overall silver. The small decal sheet contains national insignia, all the required numbers, PZL logo in black and white and a little red scorpion. Each image is matt and there is plenty of carrier film around them. However, when on the model the decals reacted very well with Aero Set and Sol solutions and there was no silvering. The overall silver machine (black
116) has a rudder painted in national colours (vertical stripes of pale
blue and white), but does not have national insignia on the fuselage sides.
This option has wheel fairings.
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This option has a little red scorpion underneath the canopy. The instructions show that this particular aircraft had national insignia on the wing upper surfaces. However, a colour drawings in "PZL P.24" book show the same aircraft without these markings. I cannot get anything from photographs of this particular machine, but all the other P.24s have national insignia on the wing upper surfaces and I decided to include them. Final touches included brown wash on the wings and fuselage, some silver paint chips, exhaust stain and gun smoke. Overall it is a very good vacumformed model kit of a very interesting and important aircraft.
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