Mirage Hobby's 1/48 scale
PZL P.11c

by Maciek Zywczyk

Mirage Hobby's 1/48 scale PZL P.11c  is available online from Squadron

The PZL P.11c was a great plane, very advanced in the time it was designed. Unfortunately it had no successor, so Polish pilots had to fly it against Bf 109’s in September 1939, the begin of the 2 WW. Although German design was superior in every aspect, some of them were destroyed by Polish P.11c.

The quality of Polish pilots was proven later, when they had possibility to use equally advanced planes. In Battle of Britain 126 German planes were shot down by Polish squadrons in RAF.

A detailed review of the Mirage kit by Mike Dobrzlecki may be found elsewhere on Hyperscale. I started to build it immediately after it was released. The kit contains a small etched fret, but I used also 2 photoetched sets from PART: S48-105 and S48-107.

The interior was totally rebuilt with etched and self built parts.

 

I opened also side panels to show machine guns. Side walls were thinned and internal structure made from pieces of styrene sheet. The major problem in the kit are openings in the front of fuselage. They are very soft, not deep enough and very hard to correct. Part provides etched parts, with very fine detail. But I don’t know, how to bend them to fuselage shape without loosing fine surface detail. I decided to shape them more or less correctly, glue to the plastic fuselage, putty with super glue and sand to shape. Dzus and rivets were sanded off, but fine openings were much better then soft depenings in plastic parts. Of course some material from plastic part was cut off, so openings are really empty.

The engine was detailed a little bit, but not too much, because it is not very visible after assembly.

 

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

Engine covers are in cone shape, together with propeller hub. There are also some vents in them, but plastic part is too short. Part provides replacement, and bending parts to cone shape is much easier then in case of front part of fuselage.

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A radiator was built from photo etched parts, almost like real thing. It was an exercise in patience, but the effort was worth it.

The spinner was simplified so I glued parts together, filled it and sanded to correct shape using motor tool. Then again with motor tool deepenings for blades were made and it looks much better.

Some other modifications were made, most of them are visible on the pictures. After assembly lines were rescribed and underside of fuselage detailed with scratchbuilt and photoetched parts.

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

 

Conclusion

 

The Mirage PZL P.11c is a great kit, but it needs lot of work. There are plenty of reference books here in Poland and after my kit was finished, a resin engine was released (ToRo Models), it do it could be detailed much more…
 

 

 

Additional Images

 

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Model, Images and Text Copyright © 2006 by Maciek Zywczyk
Page Created 12 September, 2006
Last Updated 21 February, 2007

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