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Avia S-99

by Jim Baker


Description

Here is my 1/48 scale Avia S-99, based on the old very nice Monogram Messerschmitt Bf 109G-10 kit.

The Germans were originally producing the Bf-109G-10 in Czechoslovakia towards the end of the war, and when the war ended the Czechs simply picked up production where the Germans left off. There were only a few S-99s built before the warehouse holding the Daimler-Benz engines burned to the ground and necessitated the adaptation of the Bf-109G airframe to take the Junkers Jumo engines originally intended for He-111 bombers, resulting in the nasty S-199 which everyone immediately hated.

Since the factory that produced these airframes was originally German, I applied German colors throughout. I painted the cockpit and wheel wells RLM66 -- mainly because I didn't feel like cleaning out my airbrush to spray RLM02 on the wheel wells. Per the instructions, I painted the airplane RLM77 under RLM75, and the red parts are RLM23 Red, all Polly-Scale colors (actually, to be completely honest, I couldn't find any Polly-Scale RLM77 and a friend told me that Light Ghost Grey would work fine, so I used that -- it looks good enough to me). Breaking from the German tradition (and because I have no sources for Czech fighters), I did paint the propeller black.

The Tally Ho! decals went on flawlessly. A half-solution of Solvaset and water makes the decals snuggle right into the surface beautifully. After gloss-coating the model with Polly-Scale Gloss, I applied first the white surrounds and the tail insignia, and then once that was mostly set up I applied the red parts of the codes. I then sliced the panel lines with a hobby knife and applied a little more setting solution to make the decals set into the panel lines. After the codes were on, I applied the rest of the small decals.

A little Polly-Scale Flat -- the best flat coat on the planet -- and the decals were finished.

And then the rest of the build, which of course went basically perfectly since it's the Monogram kit!

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Copyright © 2006 by Jim Baker & The Testor Corporation