New fighters for a new era:
When the Civil War in Russia ended in victory for the revolutionary forces, there were 2 things that were pretty much clear in russian aviation: most of the flying material was either reaching obsolesence or woefuly war weary. Among many other designers, Polikarpov was to start producing the ubiquitous reconnaisance biplane D.H.9A as the R-1, but he was also laying the foundation of what would earn him the nickname "King of fighters" during the 20s and 30s.
Open to new technologies and production techniques, Polikarpov set to design a single seat fighter of mixed construction, designated IL-400 (this meaning fighter, Liberty, 400h.p.). The heavy, low compressed and powerful Liberty engine was chosen and mated to a fuselage of all wooden construction and very clean lines. Wings, stabilizators and rudder were built out wooden formers and fabric covered. The front end seemed to have been hastily attached there by means of cutting an R-1 nose and glued to the fuselage. The prototype was tested in August 1923 and proved to be very difficult to fly, since the Center of Gravity was put too far back and the flying surfaces were everything but effective. To make a long story short, the fighter ended up crashing.
A second prototype with some major changes was built, all flying surfaces were now of aluminium profiles and covered with corrugated aluminum sheets. Not only construction was revolutionary for what russian designers were used to, but it was also a monoplane without outer rigging of any kind except for the fixed undercarriage. The frontal radiator of the 1st prototype gave way to a 2 piece system under the nose and a more streamlined cover and propeller hub were adopted for the front end. Also and perhaps the key feature, the CoG was changed with new wing profile. A small but important detail on what a trend setter the plane was is that from that moment on, every fighter prototype produced in Russia was to be armed from the beginning, even for its maiden flight.
On July of 1924, almost a year after the maiden flight of the ill-fated 1st prototype, pilot K. K. Artseulov climbed into the cockpit of the 2nd fighter prototype. This time it was christened IL-400b. The flight was uneventful, and in October of the same year it was passed on to the factory for tesing. While it had an unmatched performance and was extremely fast, pilots had to work its way around the controls, being extremely heavy. Things can get messy, sometimes...
Finally, it was intended for mass production as the I-1, thus becoming the first fighter plane of the Soviet Union. But, and there's always one, it was too expensive and complex to produce with all that aluminium. So, what to do? Polikarpov was instructed to redesign further more the plane, leaving behind the metal parts and a new set of wooden wings and flying surfaces were made available for testing. These not only needed reinforcing from the beginning, but they also proved to have the wrong design for the aircraft. Again the CoG was too far back and the aircraft handled now not only heavily, but also in a sluggish way and very prone to enter spins.
Saddly, every aircraft produced was scrapped and we have no survivors left today of this most unusual plane.
The model kit, or how to (not) fear the unexpected:
Ever since i saw the drawing of 2 (yes, 2) IL-400b flying around on ICM's box, I wanted to build this kit. It looked so odd and racer looking that it kept lurking at the back of my head until I had the chance to buy it. Besides that, I have some sort of fixation with slogans... And this plane had a remarkably beautiful one.
This model was built some 2 years ago, in early 2006, so bear with me if some details are a little bit fuzzy. First things first, so the whole of the kit was washed to get rid of the release mould. After chopping the parts out of the sprues I started to think about the painting sequence. After checking references here and there and against what the instructions said, I decided to imitate the looks of natural wood, metal and leather used in the original... Without having any information on the cockpit's lay out.
Who cares? Just put your brain to work and start looking at that small picture that's on a magazine. It's the model you're building and its a cut out drawing. Sweeeeet!!! Off we go with the stretched sprue, a random seat filed to shape and lots of glue and ingenuity. After a while I had my cockpit fully detailed: Rudder bar and cables, throttle and mixture cuadrant, seat and straps, and even some small dials for the instrument panel.
All that was metal, got a coat of Humbrol's 56 or 11, the straps being painted with H-118 Light Earth. Then, the fuselage got its "wood looking" paint job. Now, I have a very shameful confesion to make: wood grains is a PITA for me.
At least in the usual way with oil paints, watercolors and stuff. I don't have the artist's touch for that. So, I had to develop my own way on doing things. As with most things in life, so it's not a big deal.
What you do in these cases is simple. You have a WWI propeller? You pick some middle to dark hue to paint the base coat. A 20s propeller might have a dark, middle or light hue and a 30s, middle to light hues probably. It all depends on what wood was used to carve the real thing. In that way you base might range from a dark paint like H-186 or ModelMaster's Italian Red Brown to H-63 Sand, just to name a few.
In this case, I picked H-63 and painted both the innards of the fuselage, cockpit and propeller. Once dry, I started rubbing down all the pieces with my trusty Faber Castell Dark Brown pencil. When you do it gently, the pencil will leave small dots and lines, press a little bit harder and you have the kind of lines that conform wood grain. The up side to it is that it is fast and you can clean up any messes with an eraser or tone it down with the White pencil. A nice coat of gloss varnish and that's it. It's done and it looks good.
Following the assembly, the fuselage was mated after adding the wing spar, another of those wonderful and thoughtful gadgets that ICM uses to include in their kits. After building some of their dreaded Yak fighters both in 48th and 72nd, I got to tell you that this model went on like a breeze, I only used some filler on the fuselage spine.
Now, I turned my attention to the wings. They are split into no less than 5 parts EACH. Why? I don't know but it surely had to do with the absolutely amazing corrugated details on them. Soon, I had 6 parts per wing as I cut off the ailerons. Only one aspect of building the wing won over my eagerness to build the kit: the rear of the wing is a separate piece and a small gap shows on the corrugated surface. I've seen people fill and file it to good avail even when losing some detail but not me, it looks like a panel line anyway.
With all the sub assemblies ready, I mated them to the fuselage and checked alignment. Perfect. Let it drya for a day and move on to the painting stage. Now, It says in the instructions that the wooden fuselage is aluminium and the metal fittings are some kind of polished metal. I painted the whole model in Humbrol's H-191 Chrome Silver and of course, corrugated worked its magic on the colour: you could almost never tell it's all the same colour from all the indents, corrugations, rivets and bolts on the plastic surface. Two shades of metal at the expense of one. As they say, it's priceless!
Gloss varnish in the form of Revell 1 and on to the decals. I know that most ICM decals are a dog to apply, but this ones worked quite well. Gloss varnish left to dry, decals placed with Humbrol's Decalfix and a coat of Humbrol H-135 Satin Varnish did the trick et voila! No decal film visible... As I said, these ones worked quite well.
All that was left to do was gluing the wheels after painting in H-191, H27 for the tires (NO black for early rubber tires, anything but black) and H-118 and 119 plus washes for a slightly muddy and used look.
And, that's it, there you have this beautiful fighter, all shiny in its prototypical splendor.
Some more pictures of it:
Some "professional" photos", for a change.
The only thing I'll complain about this build has nothing to do with the kit itself, but the lack of suitable figures to put alongside in a typical group picture, to portray the sense and feeling of acomplishment they must have had while creating Russia's first modern fighter.
Take care and till our next installment,
The Modeling Underdog
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Martin