Hillson Praga E114B sport monoplane, KP 1/72nd kit

Another beautiful little kit from KP to add to their increasing line of refreshing, attractive, and significant civil planes.

The completed model is here:
https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2019/01/hillson-praga-e114b-kp-172-completed.html

The Praga E114 was conceived and built in Czechoslovakia during the mid and late 30s and developed into a whole family of two-place, side by side sports and touring planes with changes in the power plant and details regarding it’s control surfaces, landing gear and glazing, among other minor modifications.
There is abundant information on the Net for this one, should the modeler wish to look up for details and background history, as well as -for the more adventurous-, for alternate decorations and possible variants with some little effort.
The kit depicts the B version, it is charming and has nice molds, clean transparencies and interesting decals.
For us, lovers of things that haven’t been already seen and built to utter exhaustion, this is the kind of release that gets our juices running.

 An additional benefit for British modelers is the fact the the plane had a strong association with the UK, being licensed and produced as the Hillson Praga Air Baby:

 To complement and facilitate the build, I acquired after market masks.
The same manufacturer produces "wood" decals for this kit.
  At this moment I can't see any photo-etched parts offered, but surely those will also eventually appear:

 

 Clean, nice molding:

 Interesting detail including a nice interior:

 Accurate in the fact that whilst everything else was plywood-covered, the horizontal tail was fabric covered instead:

 Other details visible: 

 Well-produced transparencies that will allow dexterous modelers to pose the leading edge cockpit section opened to allow access as per original:

 Decoration options on what looks like well-printed decals of quality:

 Color instructions that seem to make sense and are well printed at a comfortable size:

And we encounter some issues...
Parts separated from the sprues.
Some of the gates are thick and hard. Watch out for those small parts, remove them carefully and do not lose them.
To clean some of them is a pain in the cushion. A few of them may need redoing with rod, wire or solder, which in many cases is much speedier than try to clean them from excrescences and mold lines whilst trying to avoid breaking them.
Almost every part had a bit of flash, quite hard in some of the parts, even if this is a brand new kit.
The surface of the plastic is smooth and shinny, but the plastic itself reminded me of the old metal-looking ones that were a bit brittle. Some of the small parts had slightly miss-matched halves:

 

The back of the cockpit is nothing like on the instructions. You have to figure it out:

Did Sir Sean Connery fly on a Praga? Hum...😃

May be in the movie
"Zha plainn that wash choo schmoll choo sh.g an enemy schpy"

A filler part that goes between the two wing halves is glued in place after some slight sanding>

A session with the airbrush is being prepared for the multiple builds:

The top half of the wing is glued on:

 The top transparency (that will be only partially clear, actually) has two curved flaps on the sides. It looked like flash, but too neat to be so. I checked and found so far nothing that justifies the presence of those two thin fins:

 So I cut them off. The fit of the part is very good:

 Since I want to represent this part open as in the real thing to allow access and egress of the plane, I have to add some closing structure guided by photos of the original. Several parts need fabrication and adjustment:

 The internal for ribs are carefully glued on, avoiding touching the section that will remain clear:

I see in many photos a laminated wood propeller that has the external two thirds or so painted, in a color that I assume is red for safety and visibility, so I made two little laminated props to chose one for the model. I will also eventually paint the kit's one for reviewing purposes, though:

 Some notes:
The two British registration options given in the kit are G-EAUP and G-EAUT. There are several images of the latter on the Net, showing some interesting details not described in the kit: in one image the nose is not colored, but has probably a metal hue, this is accompanied by a triangular flag on the fuselage front. The ailerons have a long and stylized counterweight, as well as the rudder, these are absent from any other photo that I have. There is also visible in photos a Pitot under the left wing, and a Venturi on the left side of the fuselage, all as said before absent from the kit instructions on the box. On the top of the wing there are a few bumps associated with the hinges of the leading edge-cum-upper windscreen, absent in the kit.
The kit gives the wrong position in the instructions for the stubby Pitot provided, but the wing halves have a minute mark in the correct position for it (for some of the Pragas, not all of them).
G-EAUP has the same Pitot under the wing, and not as described in the kit.

Base colors are applied to some parts:

After the masks are removed, here is the coochee-coochee little laminated prop:

The landing gear legs have minute pips, and their location is marked on the fuselage surface, but I drilled those locations to provide a firmer anchorage:

 The cockpit is completed:

 And the fuselage sides are glued together. Provided that you sand a bit the contact edges of the cockpit floor and bulkhead, the fit is ok:

The wing needed its V cut sanded a bit to get a good fit. The wing spar should align with the cockpit bulkhead (dry fit here):

I could have masked the wheels for painting, but I decided to make metal hubcaps from aluminium foil. I punched two circles of adequate diameter:

Pushed them in with a sphere tool on cardboard:

 Paint and ready to be glued on:

If detail is needed (screws, axle cap) they can be also engraved cautiously:

The nose tip is glued on, again a fair fit. The six parts that comprehend the enclosing of the leading edge/windscreen are on now:

The upper nose/windshield -to which the instrument panel was previously glued- is attached in place  without problems:

The wing is glued on. Noticed it has the spar area already painted on wood color. The stab strut locations are marked as tiny pips, so I removed them and drilled small holes for them. I will replace the plastic strut parts of the kit for finer strut material. The horizontal tail is a slide-on affair, but you have to enlarge a bit the hole for it to fit comfortably.
So far so good:

As time goes by my talents grow greater: I now manage to lose parts at a much quicker rate. I cleaned the exhaust part and carefully threw it somewhere. I had to make a new one:

The intended plane, G-AEUT, had as said before balanced ailerons, a Pitot and a Venturi, that you have to provide:
The Venturi will come from the spares box, and the counterweights and Pitot are scratched:

First coat of primer.
Priming is very good, because it reveals all the blemishes, but it's very bad, because it reveals all the blemishes:

The landing gear is added, as well as the aforementioned aileron balances and Pitot. Ready now for the paint:

A gloss black base is airbrushed in preparation for the top color.
As it happens, this particular plane had a different prop than the laminated wood ones I prepared (see above), so the kit's prop is painted (yellow tips included) to be used. The window frames and engine are painted at this time too:

The aluminium color is airbrushed:

Masking and painting of the red color ensues:

Masks off:

It is now List Time! wheels, rudder control cables, engine, stab struts, Venturi, are all added, with more to come:

A word about the kit's decals:
I got two decal sheets, a larger one and a smaller one, the smaller one had some extra details and a couple of spare registrations. These are the type of decals that are very good, because their carrier is very thin and will mostly disappear, but these are also decals you have to handle very cautiously, for the same reason.  I managed to fold one and break two others. I used some spares from other regs.
For the model I am making, G-AEUT, the location for the decals given in the instructions is slightly off. Looking at photos you see that the fuselage regs do not align with the top spar, but are angled. The regs on the top wing should be more spread out, the regs under the wing are ok.

Decals on. Photos show two more cushions on the front of the spar, so those are fabricated and painted. The exhaust is on. Additional painting of the flip over section started:

To be continued.....