Theuns - Now that's a seriously nice model. Excellent fine detail painting, camo and decaling. Very impressive, I like it, thanks for the post and photos.

Patrick

Nice work Theuns, on an unusual aircraft, at least for me. I like it!

Max

Unique build and really out of the box aircraft!  Just fantastic overall!

Toshi

Great build, thanks for sharing.  I wonder, did they have gun gas injestion problems, given where the guns were relative to the intakes?

John

Cant say that I know that one. One of the guys at my IMPS was a driver on ne of those, I will ask him.

These Impalas were used rather extensively in Bush war Ops, even shot down a few Angolan AF MiL 8's and 24's so it could not have interfered to much.

Thos 30mm Defa's really "ripped" I always liked them doing low level strafing. 

Theuns

Now I'm curious, where did you see them firing their guns, and where are you a IPMS member that you know a pilot? 

John

Because I live in South Africa and during my stint in the military as a spec ops medic we did live fire training at Army Battle school.

The Impala guys would do ground attack runs on the "enimy area" with the guns and rockets before we would move in for CCB in mech infantry formations.

They would usually come in just after the fast-jets did their ultra low level bombing runs.(now THAT was impressive!)

I work as a mechanic for an arobatic display team end one of those guys was a fast jet driver, the other guy at out local IPMS in Johannesburg was an Impala driver.Interestingly there is an Impala standing about 20m away from the IPMS entrance, so it would be unwize to so my model as a SAAF plane....it is to eazy to see the mistakes if compared to the real one  LOL

Theuns

Really nice Impala, Theuns. This is the ex-ESCI kit, right?

I believe ot is a rebox of Ecsi yes.

Theuns

Nice work Theuns, great work on the camo. And it's always great to see something a little different. 

This Impala was built close to where I work. It was a "copy" of the Aermachi MB 326k. 

Atlas aircraft co started assembly and later making the 2 seater MB 326. Then also did the 326K atack onle like above. 

Because of the political situation the old SA gov could not buy any arms so we had to build everything inhouse. 

The RG31 APC that the USMC uses is a local SA design. We used allot of them for the motorized infantri aswell as pioneering their use in a COIN urban setup during the mid 90's

The mb 326K'S were later sold to the Brazilian AF. I believe the US test pilot school operated a 326 at one stage.

Theuns

Very nice, Theuns.