PZL P.24G

by Lukasz Kedzierski

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The full history of PZL P.24G and its use by the Hellenic Air Force in World War 2 were described in my earlier article about 1:72 scale kit of P.24G, which can be found on HyperScale.

The 1/48 scale kit was recently produced by Warrior Models from Poland and was already presented here on Hyperscale by Artur Golebiewski.

What you get in a box are beautifully done resin parts with a very good surface detail, 2 vacuformed canopies, white metal parts for the cockpit, landing gear and wings struts and a nice sheet of decals. The box says you can build either the P.24G or the cannon armed P.24F, but the cannon pods are not included in the kit, however, you get the decals for the F version on the decal sheet.

Construction started in the cockpit, which goes quite nicely together although working with the metal parts is a bit tricky since they are very soft and easy to damage. The only additions were photoetched seat belts and instrument faces on the instrument panel. The former came from a spare Part PE set, while the latter were cut out from Tamiya D.520 sheet, which contains a nice instrument panel decal. Each individual face was snuggled down with help of Aeromaster Sol solution and sealed with a drop of Future. The entire cockpit was sprayed silver followed by a wash with raw umber.

The construction is then pretty straight forward, but all the parts require cleaning and preparation.

The white metal parts need a lot of sanding and polishing, but I do not recommend the same treatment for the resin parts. Sanding (with fine wet and dry paper) brought up to the surface hundreds of little bubbles, which were almost impossible to fill in later on. It looks like the resin problem and in my opinion it is the only letdown of the otherwise excellent kit. Initially, I filled the tiny little holes with a gap filling superglue, but that did not help much since all of the bubbles showed up again after priming as well as some more, previously unnoticed. Sanding and spraying again resulted in more holes, and at tis point it started getting on my nerves. Finally, I decided to coat the troubled areas with Mr. Surfacer 1000, which was airbrushed in a few light coats, followed by some gentle sanding with micromesh. This was then airbrushed with gloss black in preparation for Alclads. Some bubbles were still there, but I decided not to worry about that anymore and proceed with the construction.

There is no major problem fitting the wings, horizontal stabilizers and the engine cowling, but landing gear was a bit tricky. There are two different types of undercarriage legs either for the uncovered wheels or for the wheel spats and they differ slightly. The whole lot needs to be carefully aligned and it has to be done quickly since the superglue does not leave much room for any late adjustments. The assembled undercarriage did not look strong enough for me, but to my surprise it’s still standing without any problems. I managed to destroy the tail skid and had to scratchbuilt one, which is not ta difficult thing to do.

There are two vacuformed canopies included in the kit, but the fit is not that great in this area and I sealed some gaps with white glue. Radiators on the portside of the fuselage are done in resin as well, but they can be replaced by photoetched ones from Part’s PZL P.11c set. I used the resin units provided in the kit. However, I utilised photoetched gun sight and antenna masts for the wings and the fin, which came from the aforementioned P.11c set. The guns are provided as short fragments of steel tubing, but I decided to use photoetched gun jackets from Part’s Vickers machine gun set, which necessitated the replacement of the provided tubing with tubing of a smaller diameter.

From the onset I was determined to build a NMF aircraft with either Greek or Turkish markings. In retrospect, I think I should have chosen a camouflaged example given all the problems I had with the surface preparation. However, I already had a camouflaged P.24G in 1:72 scale and NMF was my primary choice.

There are two excellent references for PZL P.24 – Wydawnictwo “Militaria” monograph by Andrzej Glass and ACE Publication monograph by Przemyslaw Skulski. Both are worth having since I think they complement each other. The latter has an English summary and also deals with model kits of PZL P.24 available on the market.

After some reading it became apparent that the Turkish Air Force had only two P.24Gs and that the decals offered in the kit have markings for the preserved example so in the end I decided to make a Greek aircraft. The decals are of outstanding quality being very thin (otherwise good luck trying to get them down on that corrugated wing surface) and of good colour density. There are markings for the Turkish museum example and plenty of markings for the Greek P.24s, however, the instructions only show one camouflage scheme, therefore the references are a must.

Also note that the NMF examples carried the Greek national markings on the upper wing surface and these are not provided on the sheet (mine came courtesy of Artur Golebiewski).

The entire kit was airbrushed with gloss black, which was then lightly polished with micromesh. The corrugated wing and stabilizer panels were airbrushed with Alclad white aluminium, whereas the remaining areas were airbrushed with Alcald aluminium.

A little bit of a wash was applied here and there and the rest of weathering is limited to the exhaust and gun smoke stains and some mud on the wheel spats.

There are a couple of photos of black Delta 116 and I decided to make this particular example.

Decals

The only problem I encountered while applying decals was the position of the national insignia on the upper wing surfaces. While there are photos showing that the markings were placed in the central position on the lower wing surfaces there is no evidence to support the placement of the markings on the upper surfaces. My internet searches came up with nothing, I tried to contact IPMS Greece, but there was no response and the post on HyperScale did not bring any solutions.

In the “Militaria” monograph there is a drawing showing markings on the upper surface in exactly the same position as the lower surface. I have contacted Przemek Skulski and asked for help, but he said that it’s impossible to know. They were there for sure, however, their size and position is unknown and later on these markings were overpainted when the camouflage was applied to the Greek P.24s. So I decided to follow “Militaria” drawings and placed decals right in the middle of the upper wing surfaces.

And here we are, PZL P.24G in 1/48 scale, an excellent addition to the recently released PZL P.11c.

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

 

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Model, Images and Text Copyright © 2003 by Lukasz Kedzierski
Page Created 15 May, 2003
Last Updated 17 March, 2004

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