KP La-5FN

This is an old kit, on a par with vintage Airfix in terms of quality and fit.

The hood scoop has been made up with putty.

The wings are not very precise and overly thick.

The angle of the tailfin is too steep. It was made shallower with putty.

The cowling rings and exhaust plates are made with Baremetal foil.

The canopy was clouded, and ill-fitting. It also cracked when I cut it off its sprue. The worst was to come: when I removed the foil as the last step to completion, the canopy appeared totally opaque in the inside. I had to replace it with the 3-piece alternative, which compounded the previous issues with a significant alignment problem.

Colors are Polly Scale USSR Light and Dark Topside Grey and RLM 65 for the AMT11/12/7 scheme. Camouflage pattern is a mix from several conflicting references. I masked the plane and sprayed a hard edge camo job, thinking that it would be easy to feather the color separation to a soft-edge finish. It did no work. The feathered dark color was always a shade different than the rest of the color patch, so I ended up repainting the dark color all over freehand. Next time, I'll save time, tape, and paint by freehanding the camo directly.

Markings are for Lt Olekhov's 32nd Guard IAP plane sometimes in 1944.
I used the scheme fromm Wings palette with 18 victory stars in 3 rows. Osprey has the same plane in 1943 at Kursk with 14 victory stars in 2 rows. Since the two-gray scheme dates from 1944, I doubt that it is correct. BTW the camouflage patterns differ in the two sources.

The stars are Tally-Ho (great!), numbers from the kit (yellowed but still good, the carrier film was trimmed after setting). The 18 kill marks are from an Academy P-39 kit. They are typical Academy, thick, immune to solvents and prone to silvering. I tried to trim the excess film but lost 4 stars in the process.