introduction

Welcome to the latest instalment of Warren’s Esoteric Kit Reviews, bought to you by the letter A and the number 82.
Recently, during the pre-Christmas (not Xmas) sales I happened to come across a number of AZ Models on special at one of the online hobby stores. Unfortunately the RAAF version of the kit was already sold out but I managed to purchase another one in the series of 1/72 de Havilland DH-82A Tiger Moths, this time ‘Over Spain’.
AZ Models are a short-run kit specialist from Prague in the Czech Republic who also manufacture Admiral and Legato kits. They have a wide range of subjects in various scales.
The Tiger Moth really needs no introduction as it has been used all over the world and most commonwealth pilots in WW2 started their careers in the Tiger Moth.

What’s In The Box?

But back to this kit which consists of the following:
1 plastic sprue,
1 PE fret,
1 acetate sheet,
1 set of full colour instructions, and
1 flyer advertising a model of a glider.

The whole shebang is in a resealable poly bag and within the bag is another small bag for the PE and acetate with a sheet of cardboard in it to protect the photo etch.

The decals are in the instructions for their protection.

These are all contained in a sturdy, end opening box.

but what about the contents?

The plastic sprue consists of approximately 41 parts, and anyone who can remember Airfix’s worthy effort will think this is way over engineered, but as you can see from the sprue shot and instructions nothing could be further from the truth.
The cockpit has side wall detailing moulded on and PE seat belts are provided as well as a couple of tiny instrument panels, remembering that there are two cockpits in this training aircraft.

The PE fret is only a couple of centimeters high and a couple wide but it has a multitude of pieces in its tiny area including seat belts.

The acetate sheet is provided for the two windscreens.

The full colour instructions are excellent and unlike many biplane instruction they actually indicate where you should drill the holes for your rigging, if you have trained pet spiders to do the rigging of this little plane in this not-so-large scale.

The colour schemes are shown on the back of the box in glorious colour so you can have some idea of what you are getting before you buy the kit which I think is a good idea.

Speaking of colour, AZ Model have referenced the colour schemes to the Humbrol range of paints.

There are two sheets of decals, one of which is a correction sheet for the centre of the roundels which should be purple, not red.

And in conclusion..

I have never built or even had a look at an AZ Model before so this build will be very interesting. If it is as good as the other short run kits coming out of the Czech Republic, from Special Hobby, MPM etc, then it should be a good kit, but we shall see.

Please remember, when contacting retailers or manufacturers, to mention that you saw their products highlighted here - on AEROSCALE..