For this one, I began by first painting all the interior bits, wheel wells, inner gear doors and the nose compartment with dark gull grey as recommended in the instructions. I also glued together the wing tanks and horizontal stabilizer bits. Next I painted the exhaust pieces with Alclad II 'jet exhaust' as these would soon be hidden in the fuselage when the halves were closed. The instrument decals were next and this led to a bit of a surprise. The black outline to each panel is not permanent and breaks into tiny sections when wet. Each panel decal is actually 3 or 4 sections and getting those on without some of the outline bits attached is nigh near impossible. You have been warned! Also, the working time on these decals is rather short as the glue on the paper backing soon goes away making the final bits difficult to remove from the sheet.

With all that done, I started assembling the various bits for the cockpit. For the rear seat, you have to remove the rails on the upper portion of the seat and the angle sections from the top of the seat rails. Be sure to have the grooves facing inboard on the seat rails as the aft seat has some small panels that have to be glued in place. I then attached all the bits for the nose compartment (though not the landing gear). This compartment, the interior and the exhaust section were then glued into one fuselage half.

Kit instructions state that 15 grams of weight is needed and to put it under the cockpit. Well, I saw no way to put that much weight under the cockpit so put 14 grams just behind the cockpit assembly and 3 grams under the cockpit. I then taped the fuselage halves together as well as the wings and the horizontal stab. Even without the flaps, elevator and rudder, it was barely nose heavy. I then filled nearly all the remaining openings under the cockpit and that seems to have been enough. I glued the clear blast shield to the other fuselage half and when dry, the fuselage halves were glued together. I used super glue for the seams and a pair of sink areas I found on the underside.

The next thing I did was to attach the small etched pieces in the flap area. Naturally, I managed to lose a couple of the tiny one (which is one reason I am not fond of p.e.). Actually, they fit in the slots quite tightly, making it easy to simply add a touch of superglue to them once in place. It is getting them there via tweezers that causes me issues!

Anyway, with those in place, the wing halves were glued together and the engine intake trunking installed. These stick out a lot more than you'd think so test fit the wings before the cement dries to be sure you have them at the proper angle. I glued the elevator to the horizontal stabilizer with the elevator angled up. I looked at literally dozens of photos of L-39s parked on the ground and found this feature to be pretty common. What I also noted was that in none of the photos were the flaps lowered nor were the speedbrakes open. Once again, a model company gives us options that are not prototypical, but there are probably those who would whine if not provided. Having installed all that photo etch, I will be building my kit with the flaps lowered.

I then glued on the rudder and horizontal stabilizer. I also said goodbye to the painting and parts I put into the upper nose bay and glued the cover shut. The cover required several applications of filler as it did not fit all that well. Then I glued on the boarding steps, masked and glued on the windscreen, masked the other two canopy bits and tacked them on in preparation for painting. The wheel wells were filled, the flaps simply fit into place and it was off to the paint shop.


Thanks to AMK's choice of markings, picking one was not at all easy. I eventually settled on the Indonesian version. This required the nose, wing and stab tips, speed bullet tip and a fuselage band to be painted red. First I used Tamiya gloss white and when dry, Gunze red was then sprayed over those areas. After allowing it to cure, I masked the red parts. The rest of the airframe was painted light aircraft grey, using Humbrol #166, which I thought was a better match than Model Master FS 16473.


Once the paint was dry enough to touch (which was pretty much overnight thanks to thinning it with lacquer thinner), I removed the masking and continued the build. This meant the landing gear. The nose gear is a very complex and rather fragile-looking assembly, consisting of five separate pieces. The attachment parts are rather frail looking and I'm not sure how it will handle all the nose weight. This is where a hoped-for Scale Aircraft Conversions metal gear would come in handy, especially if they cast this all in one piece. The main gear attachment points, like the nose gear, are all quite scale and in this case, the gear attaches to the rear of the wheel well, just like the real aircraft. Of course, this isn't the strongest attachment point for a model, so one will have to be cautious and get a good join. The instructions would have to attach the wheels and gear doors before installation, but frankly, that would make attaching the legs and the retraction strut pieces quite difficult, so I left those off until the gear was fully dry.

With the gear in place there were a myriad other bits to attach. I glued on the wheels, being especially careful with the nose wheel as it is rather flexy. I then glued on all the gear doors. The rear ones fit quite well. I also glued on the flaps as well as some scoops I missed and the rear mounted IFF antenna. The nose gear landing light was a real pain to get in place and refused to fit on its designated location so I fudged a bit. Also added were the under-wing rad alt antennas and the light on the underside. The wing tip lights refused to fit and one went flying. The instructions have you install these when you join the wing halves. Despite the hassles of masking them when painting the wing tips, this is a time when the instructions are right. I filled the holes with clear paint and built it up so there would be something there. Last items to be attached were the canopies. I did a bit of touch up painting and tried some AK Interactive 'smoke' pigment, which looks convincing enough. Last bits to be glued on were the wing tanks and that was it.