1/72 AML Lavochkin La-5FN

Gallery Article by Roman Schilhart on May 18 2011

 

The Lavockin La-5FN kit comes from Czech manufacturer AML and is a multi-media affair: It contains plastic, resin and a vacu canopy, but no etched fret. It was one of the first real short-run kits I ever did; there are no locator pins, and fitting the assemblies was rather difficult and time consuming. A lot of time had to be spent on dry fitting, filling and sanding.

The decal sheet gives you 12 options in total; 11 for Czech Flight Division planes from World War II plus one Czech post war example. I chose the mount of Captain Frantisek Fajtl, who flew this plane at the time of the Slovak Uprising in September/October 1944 from Tri Duby airfield in Slovakia.

I painted with Haarder & Steinbeck airbrush using Mr. Hobby colors, weathering was done with oil paints.

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I believe this kit has some shape issues, most notably the air intake on the cowling. It should be more flat towards the back section, something I realized too late. Modifications on the original kit: replacing the pitot tube with wire and adding brake lines.

A very interesting subject, but a challenging kit. Apart from the old Kopro/Zvezda molds, this is the only La-5FN available in 1/72 scale to my knowledge. 

Roman Schilhart

Photos and text © by Roman Schilhart