1/48 Mirage PZL P.11c

by Maciek Zywczyk

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  September 1 1939 Anniversary  - WW2 begins 

 

PZL P.11c was a great plane, very advanced in the time it was designed. Unfortunately it had no successor, so polish pilots had to fly it against Bf 109’s in September 1939, the beginning of WW2.  Although German design was superior in every aspect, some of them were destroyed by polish P.11c’s. The quality of Polish pilots were proven later, when they had the possibility to use equally advanced planes. During the Battle of Britain,  126 German planes were shot down by Polish squadrons in the RAF.  

I started to build it immediately after it was released. The kit contains a small etched fret, but I used also 2 photoetched sets from PART: S48-105 and S48-107. 

YThe interior was totally rebuilt with etched and self built parts.

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 I also opened the side panels to show the machine guns. The side walls were thinned and the internal structure was made from pieces of styrene sheet. The major problem with this kit are the openings in the front of  fuselage. They are very soft, not deep enough and very hard to correct. Part provides etched parts, with very fine detail. But I don’t know, how to bend them to the shape of the fuselage without loosing fine surface detail. I decided to shape them more or less correctly, glue to the plastic fuselage, putty with super glue and sand to shape. Dzus and rivets were sanded off, but fine openings were much better then soft depenings in plastic parts. Of course some material from plastic part was cut off, so the openings are really empty. 

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The engine was detailed a little bit, but not too much, because it is not very visible after assembly.

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Engine covers are cone shape, together with the propeller hub, there are also some vents in them. The plastic part is too short, but fortunately Part provides a replacement, and bending parts to cone shape is much easier then in case of the front part of fuselage. 

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A radiator was built from photo etched parts, almost like real thing. It was an exercise in patience, but the effort was worth it.

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The spinner was simplified, so I glued parts together, filled it and sanded to correct shape using motor tool. Then again with motor tool depenings for blades were made and it looks much better. Some other modifications were made, most of them are visible on the pictures below. After assembly, panel lines were rescribed and the underside of the fuselage was detailed with scratchbuilt and photoetched parts.

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It’s great kit, but needs lot of work. There are a lot of reference books here in Poland and after my kit was ready, a resin engine was released (ToRo Models), so it could be detailed much more…

Maciek

Photos and text © by Maciek Zywczyk