With summer holidays coming up, and two campaigns to activate afterwards I decided to finish a little rat I've started earlier this spring. Since I've spent a lot of time in China lately I felt that I needed a Chinese fighter on the shelf, and since the I-16 is one of the "rock'n'rollest" aircraft of all times that should be it.

I wanted to try the salt-in-water masking for some foot step damage but it wasn't easy to get the drops to spread.


I would have liked to get some of this effect around the cockpit hatches too, but how to you make the water "stick"?


Anyway, it's a cool technique, and I hope to be able to use it with some more precicion on my next Bf 109 för the battle of europe. The plane got decent enough too, so now I only need some underwing stars and perhaps a slightly heavier wash.


Thanks for looking in!

Hello Tony,

The Rat is looking good. I just completed an I-16 earlier this year for the Between the Wars Campaign. At one point I was trying to decide between Chinese or Spanish versions my son chose the Spanish Civil war version here is a link to some inspiration (not that you need it) https://aeroscale.kitmaker.net/forums/106679&page=6
Keep us posted.

Sincerely,
Brian

Thanks for the comments Brian. Took a look at your Rat too, and I see that I can get on a bit more with wear and wheathering without messing up the shape of the plane. The way China appears today I can hardly think they polished their fighter planes in the 30's.

By the way, the wires from the wheel hubs, are those for retraction of the undercarriage? I guess I'm not as finished as I thought

Good old Russian engineering why use hydraulics when a bit of rope will do.

Allright, thats a nice solution. As an engineer I just love that kind of enginuity. Why invest a million $ in a zero-gravity ballpoint, when you can write in space with a Faber lead pencil.

Yep, they pull up the landing gear as the pilot turns the crank in the cockpit.

Good-looking model you have there, is that Eduard or the older Hobbycraft kit?



Because they could?

Hi Eetu. It's neither. It's Academys, but markings are the same as Hobbycraft, and I get a Hobbycraft feeling from the panel lines. The box looks like this though.



And the internals like this.



The only thing I can say against it is that the cockpit and engine are crude, but since you'll have to cut doors open to see the pit, I didn't really mind. Engine looks well enough behind the schroud since the openings are very small. A very light grey base colour and an oil wash, and it was good to go.

the Academy and Hobbycraft versions of that kit are identical - they share many molds. I think that maybe Academy has even taken over the Hobbycraft molds entirely, and they don't offer anything new in the kit other than a significantly higher price (and current availability)

That sounds like good business. For them, that is. I got lucky and found it on a swap-page here in Sweden, so I got away rather cheap. But it's a bit annoying though, because I bought it more or less of curiosity over Academys style.