Profiline Let L-13 Blanik (Finished 30-102012)

CrashTestDummy

Nice work on what appears to be a TINY and difficult subject.  It turned out very nice.

Gene Beaird,

Pearland, Texas

It is indeed a small aircraft. The difficulty is only because of this kit (instructions, decals and enginering of the wings). I have several other gliders (mostly Polish kits by ZTS Plastyk) which all where very easy and quick builds. So gliders are not a difficult subject per se.

I have finished the build, I added the wheel and tail strut. Weathering does not look right on gliders but I did brush some pastels on the moving surfaces of the wing and tail, just to get a little difference in the sheen of the rest of the plane.

Nice work on what appears to be a TINY and difficult subject.  It turned out very nice.

Gene Beaird,

Pearland, Texas

Last stage of this build, I put on a matt coat and removed the masking.

Here is the build with the masking removed. I used 3m scotch tape, it is very easy put on the canopy but removing it is always a tedious task:

Last things to do are the decals on the windows (!) and a painting few details.

Last night I worked on the decals. I must say that the Microscale decal film helped but not much. I gave them one coat of decal film and the decals went from "extremely fragile and unworkable" to "fragile and barely workable".

Without the decal film the decals just shattered into pieces when manipulated. With the decal film I still had some torn decals. It looks ok from a distance:

But up close you can see where the decals haved torn or folded. Furthermore, due to their fragility, I was unable to get all the lines straight:

It is defintily not perfect but I decided to keep it this way. Further manipulation of the decals will just cause more problems. And replacement decals form Profiline will probably have the same problems. Let just keep it at "it is the best I could do".