During my Air Force enlistment I got to travel about, quite a bit, and one of the many places I went was the Aleutian Island Chain in the Alaskan Territory. I got to meet some of the local people who lived and worked among the military people in the area.  One such person was Ralph Thunder Hand, a local hunter, fisherman and guide, with the Alaska Territorial National Guard, and he knew as much on cold weather survival as can be expected. A half-hour chat with Ralph was as good as a six-month seminar in survival. I met him when he was the tender age of sixty-five and it wouldn't surprise me too much at all to learn he was still out harpooning whale (for his village food supply) to this very day. (I never said he was politically correct.)  He was about as colorful a character as you'd ever expect to find and with military base privileges he was very often source of good company, good conversation and some exciting stories.

As well as the above-mentioned pastimes, Ralph had also been a middleweight boxer and an amateur stone carver. At that last pastime he was a phenomenal craftsman. He had a simple credo, which explained his skill as a stone. If he set about the task of carving the image of a wolf he took on a peculiar mindset. "Sergeant Marrs, (He was a very formal man) there's a wolf hidden somewhere in this piece of stone. All I must do to reveal the wolf is remove all the stone that is not a wolf!" To his amusement when I was off-duty I'd watch him in fascination for a half-hour or an hour at a time. Many years later, I returned to the plastic modeling hobby after a somewhat lengthy absence and found myself attracted to the concept of conversions and to limited run kits, in which it is necessary to do conversions, in producing… 

…the intended subject.

The PZL P.11C was just about the first allied aircraft to gain a victory against Germany in the opening phases of World War II. About twenty years outdated in 1939, it slugged its way over Poland in competition with some of the best machines in the air at the time.  Poland fell (predictably) to the Nazi onslaught, but the pilots of the Polish Air Force bought vital time for the free world with their lives. They paid for our freedom in the hardest coin imaginable.

One of the first limited run kits I ever attempted was the LTD kit of the PZL.P-11C in 1/48 scale. If it weren't the only injection molded plastic kit in 1/48 scale of this subject, I would never wish it upon my worst enemy. The fit of the parts leaves a lot to be desired and it displays that tendency of limited run kits to a lack of alignment pins and connecting tabs (this kit DID have tabs to fit the horizontal stabilizers to the fuselage, however) as well as monstrous sprue attachment points suggesting a serious need for a mini-chainsaw for part removal.

 Add to that a crudeness of detail parts such as struts, propeller, cockpit details and engine and you begin to get the picture. One   neutral item was the vacuum molded windscreen. Accurate in outline but difficult to use, there are two in each kit (in anticipation of other kit builder "butchery").  On the positive side, the plans are well done, the decals are excellent in appearance if somewhat fragile (they need some sort of pre-use sealing coat) and the overall outline accuracy is excellent. The corrugated metal surfaces were quite well done but the fabric simulated control surfaces were a bit ham-fisted and are best sanded down.

 Having a personal friend in Jean-Marc Perreault of Quebec, famous for his "The Parts Yard" web site, I was able to appeal to his sense of wanting to help anyone and everyone and with a story of woe and need (not to mention significant contributions of 1/48 scale spare parts to the Yard) I received a Bristol Mercury engine left over from an Inpact kit of a Gloster Gladiator as well as its two bladed  Watts wooden prop with a conical spinner from the same source. A pair of weight-simulated tires from True Details and a set of plans from a magazine article completed the first steps of my project. Using the kit part as a template a floorboard for the cockpit may be made from Evergreen .020" sheet stock of 1 mm wide v-notch scoring and scratch built controls may be added to round out the assembly. I found the seat and dashboard to be the only useable parts from the inside of the kit.

 In my first attempt at building this kit, I butchered it badly. I tried to notch out the cooling louvers in the conical forward fuselage. I put the kit aside for several years to contemplate my folly while I searched for another kit.(It had gone out of production by the time I was ready to try again.). The control stick and rudder pedals are best scratch built along with the fuselage box - frame structure. An instrument panel is easily laminated from .010" sheet stock (also available from Evergreen Scale Models) using the kit panel for a template. The rather ham-fisted inner detail depicting the box-frame inside structure is molded directly onto the fuselage sides and is best sanded away altogether and replaced with a similar frame made of (more Evergreen) bar stock of .062" diameter. Take care to construct the frame assembly a trifle smaller than scale would indicate so as to compensate for the excess wall thickness of the plastic fuselage parts. It's pretty tight in there as it was on the real aircraft. A drafting template of elliptical shapes is helpful in cutting out bulkheads.

 Fellow model makers, this kit is "flash city"!  I began by very carefully by removing all strut work from the parts trees. That was no small task and best facilitated by gently rocking a chisel type X-acto blade back and forth across the joint between the individual parts and the runners (trees). A Xuron sprue cutter would help too! A small marble block can help as a cutting surface.  Burrs were removed from the parts with Swiss needle files and emery boards. All of the strut fairing detail was smoothed out with various grades of Creations Unlimited Flex Files. It's a very useful tool for working in tight corners. When the strut surfaces were prepared, they were pre-painted to match the fuselage color scheme and set aside. A note here: The tail plane and wing brace struts and landing gear struts were painted to match the main fuselage color scheme. A touch of Krassel masking liquid at the joining points was beneficial.

 The wing assembly itself is in five pieces and gives a fairly good replication of the wing dihedral angle.. After assembling the fuselage and horizontal stabilizers, this assembly was set aside to dry. The next assembly was the engine-cowling group. (5 pieces) The moldings leave quite a bit to be desired and a lot of refitting was done. I found it necessary to do a lot of refitting around the engine crank-case conical fairing as well. For an added touch of realism I noted on detail photos of the actual aircraft a visible space of more than a finger's width on some aircraft, between the strut work at the joining point on the underside of the wing. This is due to the fact that the struts are largely rounded bar or rod stock covered by streamlined airfoil shaped tubing. A tiny square or rectangle shaped spacer cut from sheet stock (.010") was sufficient, if marginally over scale. The assemblies should be examined to determine that the spacer is just smaller than the mating surfaces of the wing struts. A similar spacer may be done for the lower wing strut to fuselage joining point but this is a generally less pronounced spacing. If you are spray painting this model I found that some assemblies are best finished as sub-assemblies. Masking runs a risk if pulling loose a number of struts.

 I found that the finishing of this aircraft was made a bit more complicated by the arrangement of the strut work but a bit of planning alleviated this problem. I painted the wing and fuselage assemblies separately before final assembly as well as the strut work and engine/cowling arrangement. The wing itself attached to the top dead center of the fuselage with a rudimentary but functional key way lug. Heat stretched silver grey plastic was used for antenna rigging, later tightened by the application of hot air from a politician or my ex-wife's hair dryer, but 4 lb. test mono- filament fishing line fastened with CC cement will work also. Tail skid, wheels, guns, antenna wire, engine and prop were done as final add-ons in the usual fashion. Stretched sprue from a silver molded kit gives the best overall effect.

I found that Testors Model Master paints Field Drab and RLM 65 helblau were an excellent match for the Polish Air Force main color scheme and details and interior were done in flat black and flat aluminum. Keeping to a simple scheme actually enhances the austere appearance of this kit. The kit provides markings for three different machines with three different unit markings.

 This kit was a bear of a job. It's not even that the kit is a good second choice. If you want an injection molded kit of the PZL P.11C in 1/48th scale it's the only game in town.

 To paraphrase the words of Ralph Thunder Hand, There's a PZL P.11C somewhere in this mass of plastic. You only need to remove everything that's not a PZL P.11C.

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