Miles M.2H - Kovozávody Prostějov 1/72nd injected plastic

 

 (The completed model is here):

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2023/03/miles-m2h-kovozavody-prostejov-172nd.html

I like the fact that KP releases beautiful civil models, and I have built quite a few of them, all posted on this blog. Their kits required a bit of care, being short-run, but can be built into nice replicas. Modelers have signaled some accuracy issues with it, I have no idea if they are right or not. But show me, if you can, a perfect kit. Everything is butt-joined, thus perhaps requiring metal pinning for some of the parts. The kit offers three decal options, a machine that is now being exhibited in a museum in Brazil (it was originally registered in Uruguay with an Uruguayan registration, being originally G-ADAS?). It's not really clear if this museum plane is a restoration of the original plane or a replica. Then there is  machine from New Zealand (I could only find one single original photo of it) and another British machine. All very colorful.

This kit is being built in parallel with a similar offering from Plastic Passion (SBS release), an M.2F that precedes this KP kit by many years (when it rains it pours, as they say) :

https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2023/02/milkes-m2f-england-to-australia.html

Contents:

Painting starts:

Al "wood" parts are treated with oils to simulate grain:

The trousers halves are glued together:

The nose has very poor detail:

The depression at the air intake is drilled through, and more detail is added:

The kit's Pitot is replaced with a home made item:

A mock cylinder is installed behind the air intake:

Decals are provided for the inst. pan.:

New alu metal tube joysticks were fabricated to replace the kit's items (easier to make new ones than to clean the kit's). The seats (that have nice detail engraved on them) were provided with seat belts (the kit has decals for them, but I didn't use them):

A little control horn part is added:

 

The interior is in place. Now, what are the chances that the interior will be too big and will hinder the fuselage closing? In prevision for that, I already trimmed the involved parts (floor and inst. pan.) a little. Want to bet?

Well, of course the halves refused to join, so more shaving, try the fit, more shaving, try the fit, more shaving...etc.

Man, when will most manufacturers realize that most interiors do not fit properly, being bigger than they should!, and the best part is that in many cases you realize that only when everything is in place and painted, and you have to start marring all that beautiful detail. Darn, man! A plague of the hobby!

The fit is normal for a short-run kit, meaning that the seams will need some degree of puttying and sanding. In this case all the panel lines coincided, which is a bonus for this type of kit:

 Once the fuselage seams are dealt with, it´s time to add the rest. You see there the replacement Pitot and exhaust:

The stabs are metal-pinned:

And the vertical tail, after adjusting the fit, is glued on. The wings are pinned:

Wings on:

As I still didn't decide which plane will be represented, and some planes had the headrest fairing short and others long, I prepared, just in case, a longer one. As it is, the kit fairing interferes with the luggage hatch hinge at the spine. The hinge has to be re-engraved lower:

There are some strange cavities where the trousers go, but I can't fathom their purpose. Now if they would have been protruding volumes to help align the trousers, that would have been useful. In any case, the position of the trousers is marked on the wing clearly. Molding the wings in one piece is risky business, as it may have (it didn't) produce sink marks and such, but in order to achieve that I feel that the airfoil and the thickness of the wings is not quite there. Will leave point that to the experts:

Strangely, there is a double set of cockpit doors. In all the photos I have, the doors are on the right hand-side of the fuselage, and never on the left. Not sure why the kit has the additional set of doors. I will be deleting them:

A comparison of the two kits. Since my knowledge on the type is basic to say the least, you draw your own conclusions:

As a side note: the KP kit has a boxing that includes the same markings as this Plastic Passion kit (Mac Robertson race) but that is not very accurate, as the trousers -and other details- are different (correct in the Plastic Passion kit, incorrect in the KP kit).

I realized I was making the wrong type of Pitot substitute, so the proper one is made (with spares for further use):

First the cowl is painted:

With the nose masked, the cream color is airbrushed:

The somewhat complex propeller painting is done through successive maskings:

In masking the cream color to apply the burgundy one, the cream paint peeled in a few areas. I conscientiously wash my kits, so I recommend that if you are building this kit, you give the sprues a very good scrub, as my customary soft brush with mild detergent and thorough rinsing was not apparently enough to remove the de-molding agent. I had to remove and repaint the cream color in a few areas, never a fun thing to do.

More masking and painting:

And unmasking. A few touch-ups and hopefully it will be ready for the decals:

Decal application started:

 While the back of the box shows the regs in a tight group towards the wingtip, the illustration shows a much more common arrangement spread on the whole outer panel. The plane at the museum has the former:

I tend to consider museum restorations and replicas with a great dose of skepticism, as many times it is found checking photos of the original that they show inaccuracies. Minor ones I don't care, but major ones are a bummer. I couldn't find any photos whatsoever on the Net of G-ADAS as it originally was, and it has to be considered that it first had Uruguayan registrations in coming to South America. I hope the museum got it right. In retrospect, I should have gone for the Kiwi registration, of which I actually found a photo.

And now a word or two about the decals (hopefully only in my sample):

The decals are very thin (which in general is a good thing), but do not have much glue (i.e. they are not "slippery" enough to facilitate positioning) I tried with short and long soaking times, to no avail, so once off the backing sheet they stubbornly stuck to the model due to their thinness (which has a glossy surface by the way) and are very hard to move around, even with plenty of water. The two long fuselage flashes ended up breaking up in three and four pieces respectively in trying to position them (I have to say that I do commit mistakes many times, but do not consider myself a beginner fumbling around) The fuselage flash side decals seem to have three layers of color (a white base, light yellow and a "dotted" orange coat?), thus making them very brittle (sometimes white base layers render the decals brittle), stiff and completely uncooperative. The decals in my sample (and especially those flashes) are also totally, and I mean totally impervious to Micro Sol, thus not adapting well to the model's surfaces, and it was a good thing that I had separated each wing reg letter before application, as the carrier shows more than usual. The decals tend to fold very easily too, so you are warned. To work hard on a model and then have decals that perform mediocrely is not something that makes me particularly happy. To be on the safe side perhaps try the other decal versions.

The manufacturer forgot to add the wing walkway, visible in online photos of the plane:

When time and weather allow, the completed model post will be uploaded.

To be continued: