APC Decals 72124: Lavochkin La-7 II

Arguably one of the best Soviet fighters of WWII was the La-7. This aircraft combined a good handling airframe with a properly powerful engine and was a match for the late war FW-190s and Bf-109s. The type also served fairly long post-war, especially in what became Warpac nations before they were able to get jets. One of those nations was Czechoslovakia and the aircraft were used both with regular fighter units as with the border police.

All the options on this sheet have khaki upper sides with two of them having light blue undersides. The regular squadron planes have yellow spinners while the National Security Corps aircraft have dark red for the cowling forward, along the leading edges of the wings, and while it seems the entire horizontal stabilizer was also red, it probably was just the leading edges. These aircraft also had the sort of triangular insignia on the rudder.

For kits you have several options from Frog, Italeri, and the best is probably the Eduard release of several years back. The decals are nicely printed and uses an ALPS style printing method that results in an overall clear carrier. These are more durable than ALPS decals, which can easily be scratched. You can use Microset/sol with these without worry. You are provided insignia and data markings for two planes as long as one is the National Security Corps option. Instructions are nicely printed, though it would be nice to know for sure if the tailplanes were overall red on both sides.

June 2019

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Thanks to www.hobbyshop.cz for the review sheet. You can get yours at this link.

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