The aircraft was built according the same specification of Czechoslovak Ministry of Defence as the famous Czechoslovak fighter Avia B-35 / B-135. The prototype was first flown in July 1934. with 900 hp Gnome Rhone Mistral Major 14Kfs radial engine. It carried an arnament of four &,& mm machine guns model 30 emplaced in wing. The constructin was all metal frame covered with fabric. There were two prototypes built but the performance was not good with high landing speed and therefore the mentioned Avia got the green light.More on Aero A-102 on wikipedia
This is one of 2-3 1/48 resin kits by Czech producer RS models. There are 30 resin parts plus 14 valves of engine, the clear windshield and few bits you need to make of plastic sprue (guns and eleator rigging), all that wrapped in the hard box and then in polythene backs that separetes the big and small pieces. The parts are very nicely made of ochre resin, with little flash and not difficult to clean from the typical rests of the resin models. The pain are the 14 valves of the engine as to clean them is boring work. The cockpit, for lack of the sources, is very basic, and so far I have no knoledge of any PE enhancement, pitty. The instrument panel and straps would be helpfull.
The decals are provided for one of two prototypes of overall silver finish, which looks a bit boring, but it looks, at least for me pretty elegant. The building manual is somewhat spartan, with hand drawing of steps and sometimes is a bit dificult to made up with assembly places. What is most enoying is that there are no indication of the angle of the gull wings, as the wing comes in left/right pieces.
I started, what else to do, with the cleaning parts and then I continued with the cockpit that consist of instrument panel, floor, pedals, stick and seat. The pedals, stick and seat was glued to the floor and the painted silver (there is no indication what colours to use, so I assumed the silver, as this was used on other Czechoslovak aircraft). Then I addesd paper made straps I copied from the ones from kit of other Czechoslovak aircraft. The cockpit sides - the fuselage's sides were painted the same colour, shaded and then the painted instrument panel was added to the right half. The floor section was glued to the place and then the fuselage was assembled. The tricky part is to glue the small tail section of it correctly.
Next came the engine, that I find the most annoying part of the built, not for the quality, but for the amount of the valves and attaching them to the crank case. I added the some details made of the thin wire. Then the engine was painted and after some dry fitting inserted to its cover. Last the screw was attached on the screched made axe to spin.
For the cockpit I used the Revell 90 enamel as for the whole outside surfaces of teh plane. The shading was done with very thinned black oil black.
NIce, a bit simple kit of the rare airplane of small airforce from teh past. You won't be able to get it probably
June 2009