Ilyushin 2 Sthurmovik 25

The Ilyushin 2 Sthurmovik was the main ground support aircraft of the Soviet Air Force during World War II, it was used as a horizontal bomber, tank destroyer and with its main armament exhausted, it could still make strafing passes, using its secondary armament, with full confidence of being immune to infantry weapons, the most exposed parts of the fuselage were armored, even direct hits from 37mm were powerless to bring it down, earning it the nickname "Flying Tank", the only ways to bring it down were with fighters or by shooting at it. anti-tank ammunition with the 37mm anti-aircraft guns. Their main armament consisted of bombs, rockets or anti-tank guns; It participated in all the military operations of the war, and in its Il 10 version in the Korean War, one of its greatest moments was in Kursk, where it destroyed a large number of German tanks.
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  MCTNTEb Mstitel

25, Unknown unit

Taken from the book by Francis K. Mason, Illustrated Encyclopedia of Major Aircraft of World War II, Crescent books, New York, 1983, he cites the translation of the fuselage sign as Avenger, I have seen this model somewhere else, so it is Its existence is totally certain, I don't know in what unit, nor can I place it in a certain place, but it existed. Pollys paint, details with The Ancient Mariner, stars of the Airfix model

 

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My love history with Airfix

Airfix has been one of my favorite brands for decades, and that's even though in the 2010s, it was far behind in terms of modeling technology, the mere idea of ​​producing the Zero from the 60s in that decade was quite a challenge.

I learned about the brand back in the seventies, when my grandfather took me on his business trips and in meetings, he would leave me quiet, in a corner of the room, assembling and painting a model, or he would take me to a store, where the models cost 50 pence each, I bought a lot and I would put them together on the flight back to Mexico, those times when you could get on a plane with glue, paints and scissors, I still have a few of those models, and when I see them , I remember my grandfather's great affection and those beautiful years of childhood, and of course, all those models were Airfix.

One of the few models that survived from that era

 In Mexico they were not easily available, here was the kingdom of Lodela, a brand that many of us grew up with, and remember, but which disappeared in the nineties, leaving many modellers nostalgic and in search of other hobbies.

Returning to Airfix, their models generally did not offer a great challenge to assemble them, unless you decided to modify them, scratch them, or my favorite part of the Hobby, paint them, in different versions, one of the advantages of having a store is I could order complete boxes of a single model, and that's how I got 25 Zeros, some were sold, but I actually wanted them for myself, the model was terrible, poorly proportioned, with a huge helmet and no interior, but that was the fun part, making the pieces, thermoforming the helmet, making the rudders out of polystyrene, correcting the cowlings, so that they would better adjust to the different versions, the model in theory represented a Type 21, the one from Pearl Harbor, but I made almost all the variations, of the Type 21 to 62, except for the A6M4, for which there was no data.

An Airfix Zero, heavily modified, to represent a trainer

Airfix changed owners again, and is now updating, its new models are State of the Art and I want to buy a new box of Zeros, from new tooling, to continue completing my collection, which is still very incomplete, I The Zeros of several aircraft carriers and aces are missing, in addition to the rare versions, as soon as this inflationary stage passes, I will do it, to see if Airfix makes different versions of the Zero in the meantime.

Even now, when I open a red box of the new Airfix, I have that feeling of when my grandfather gave me a box, it is such a beautiful memory, that I can repeat as many times as I need, recreate a childhood happiness, many decades later, although to be honest , there are new Airfix models, which from the modeler's point of view, are much better, but I will always love those simple blister models from my childhood.

Modeling Israel vs Hamas War

 Modern wars are very difficult to model, on the one hand, practically no manufacturer makes modern equipment, modern soldiers, hardware with modern insignia, weapons, etc. Well, there is an exception, the Russia-Ukraine War can be modeled, because they are using ancient weapons, the Russians even took their old T-54s from the museums and in the emergency, the Ukrainians even used the T-34s from the monuments.

In the case of Israel's war against Hamas, it will be more complicated, because those in Hamas are very well equipped, with the most modern Russian weapons, but their uniforms are somewhat informal, more similar to those of a ninja than to the of a regular soldier, on the other hand, there are figures of Israeli soldiers, but from the Yom Kippur era.

And to finish grinding it, with the revolution of the language of the wokes (which translates as depraved or perverted, not as progressive), now you have to give the bad things nice names, otherwise you are a phobic in some way, so Now the new definitions imply that the following images must be associated with the new words:

New definition of Child:

Note the Russian weapons, AK-74, shaped charge RPG, IR markers and sights, weapons from the most modern of the Russian arsenals..

New definition of Israeli Soldier:

Note the evil "colonialism" in the eyes of this soldier, that is why those from Hamas executed them.

The problem is that if we want to make a model of the attacks, we would have to make the soldiers headless, and add a lot of gore, something that we modelers do not usually do, because in general it is considered in bad taste, unless you are a woke and consider that evil can always be justified

Modeling Area 51, the UFO

 It has always been a mystery, the reason for the UFO crash in Roswell, how did an advanced civilization crash a ship on Earth? After all, one would expect a spaceship to be so advanced that it would not have accidents.

However, a recent Hacking of the Area 52 computers, which, since they use Windows Vista, were not even a decent challenge, I obtained the following photos, in which it is explained in detail, what happened, why the accident happened:

Scratch model, plasticine alien, paper base, the UFO is the recycling of a yogurt jar lid, the bottle, Rum, why else would they visit Earth?

Critic to the Modern Art

Do modelers have more talent than modern artists?

When one visits a museum and sees the crap that these guys are presenting, the answer is obvious:

Of course we have more talent than a guy who just sticks a banana to the wall or an "artist", whose work is a half-filled plastic bucket, and who try to hide their lack of talent and technique, with bullshit, when they try to to blurt out, to justify his work, as soon as you start to listen, it is "to create awareness of...", you already know that it is a current and victimized discourse of "social justice", which has nothing to do with ART , but with posturing and vulgar politics,

I love Art, and like all good modellers, I know a lot about painting techniques, but I also enjoy art history, and I also had to read the perspective books of the great Renaissance painters, like Piero della Francesca, to pass my subjects. Geometry, so I have a respectable knowledge of painting, so when a "modern artist" tells me that I don't enjoy his work, "because I don't understand it", I can fully realize that it is the finest and purest bullshit that can say, blaming the viewer for the lack of talent of an artist, is a good way to hide, to divert a painful truth, that there are no good artists in the Museums and they are filled with merchants, a Jesus is missing to expel to these scammers of our cultural Temples.

And while art schools stop teaching painting, modelers continue to do it for pleasure, or in other words, the purest form of art, because we learn techniques, art, wear, gouache, materials , just for the pleasure of doing, of creating works, of enjoying the highest of our civilization, doing it, and yes, we are the ones who are preserving the artistic tradition of the West, it is we, for whom the manufacturers make paints, materials , brushes and all the paraphernalia that art requires.

And from our elevated vantage point in the Olympus of art, we can snort at "modern artists" who don't even know which way to hold the brush and who couldn't identify artistic sensibility, even if it bit them in the rear, who are incapable of create that emotion that the works of Caravaggio or Da Vinci did.

There is more technique in this opaque Phantom, than in many modern exhibitions.

And like those great geniuses, we do enjoy our art, we strive to learn and no matter how long it takes us, but we have great dedication and love for our Art, there is more talent in one of our model showcases than in many. museums.

Assembling the Spitfire Israel

I finally got a Starfix Spitfire, only it's 1/48, a scale I don't usually build, I bought it for a price, which I assumed was a 1/72 model, and since it came in a box the same size as the P-51 and the A-4 of that Jewish brand, I assumed it would also be on that scale, they cost the same, but no, it's bigger.

I like to assemble planes of one nationality, with models of the same nationality, so this model was meant to be painted as an IDF/AF Spitfire Mk IX, during the War of Independence; the model is level 2, very simple, so much so that the wings come in one piece, it is not a pirated copy of the Airfix one, but something similar to an upscale of the old model in 1/72 of the Mk IX of that brand, the Plane represents a Mk VIII, but it's easy to fix, doesn't have a decent interior, and the decals are for a generic RAF plane

The main parts

Already painted with the basic colors and the interior of the cabin built with scratch

The model is almost complete, it lacks paint in some details.

Temporary Decoration Fiat G.50 Freccia, Albania

 There are models that do not deserve to be represented, either because we do not have exact information about them or because their very existence is highly debatable, furthermore, there are times when we just want to have an idea of ​​what the models to be made would be like, so it is necessary to apply sometimes temporary decoration to a model, I had already talked about it before, with a Colombian J2F Duck, of which there are no photos, but I was curious how it would look, but now I am going to deal with the subject in more depth.

G.50 Freccia Albania

After the fall of Italy in World War II, much of its equipment was abandoned everywhere, in the postwar period, several countries repaired it and returned to service, so we have information on Yugoslav or Croatian aircraft, but we have no information of Albania, where the Regia Aeroanutica had large quantities of aircraft, so it is possible that some of them were repaired and used by the new Albanian Air Force, but unfortunately, there is not a single photo on the Internet of an Albanian aircraft between 1946 to 1949.

So to assemble one of them, it is impossible to have correct data, we can only speculate, so I have thought to use one of my last G.50 to assemble an Albanian plane, but before doing so, I have decided to temporarily decorate one, to see how It would be seen and if it is worth doing.

temporary badges

In a store ticket, I paint the black circles, to which I add the guides to make the red stars, as well as the decoration of the rudder, which is a rectangle with the Albanian colors; I cut them out and glue them on with a glue stick.

The result, even without cutting the rudder badge, which has given me a good idea to repair broken rudders.

And the final result, an Albanian Freccia, which really looks weird, and since I don't like it that much, maybe it would be better to paint one with the darker scheme used at the end of the war, or repaint it completely in Russian colors, like the Yugoslav appliances.