Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (Polikarpov I-1)
As always, the box... I love the box.
Not much inside the box...
First order of business... get rid of the ejection oin marks
Added sidewall details, removed the pedals and modified the seat.
A bit of trimming and it all fits inside.
Interior painted bare alluminium
Scratch built pedals and seat upgrades. Painted the cockpit floor to resemble wood.
Cockpit addons... added. Time to close it up.
The wings were a bit fussy, but I clamped them into submission.
Scratch built the front screen
Glued in place..
Had to redo the tail, so I decided to laminate a few strips of styrene to give it some thickness.
Scratched up new landing struts using leftover resin bits.
The landing struts are a bit rough, but it's the best option I have available.
First coat of paint shows all the flaws.
Second coat is better, but I think the green might be too light.
Another witch's brew of Tamiya acrylic paints and I'm happy enough with the colour.
Now for the propeller. In the story Tintin carves a new propeller from a tree using only his pocketknife... I figured I couldn't do less. 😉
All done!
I think the propeller came out alright. Maybe just a bit dark, but who's complaining?
From this angle there's no silvering on the decals... I like this angle.
A bit here, but the homemade decals were a bit fussy, so I'm not going to get to fussed about it.
A bit of cotton, some hairspray and some paint, and we have a base dio.
Not quite happy with the stand... needs a bit of work yet.
Got the stand fixed up by adding some friction pads of hot glue to keep it from sliding off.
I didn't like how the wire lightning was working, so I decided to add a small LED light to the middle of the cloud. Much better.
Hang on... let's UPGRADE!
Disassembled as gently as possible. Adding a propellor motor and some blinking lightning flashes.
Fits... like a glove!
It spins! Now to turn our attention to the pilot!
After trimming some legs, Tintin fits into the cockpit.
A very careful paint job.
And voila! All done! No more "ghost plane!"
Comments
76 14 March 2018, 00:52
Greg BakerGot bored waiting for paint to dry... so this relatively simple kit for Tintin in the land of the Soviets seemed like a good choice. Uwe's done one already, so I'll follow his path, but I think I'll go with the recently colourized version.
14 March 2018, 00:58
Greg BakerThanks Cuajete! I decided to spend some time fooling around with wood texture this time. I think it worked reasonably well. Stay tuned!
20 March 2018, 22:48
Uwe KaedingLooking good Greg - and I'm looking forward to seeing how this goes. I hadn't seen a colour version of the book so had to Google it! Looks different in green (and from the pages I saw it looks like it doesn't have the hammer and sickle on the side).
23 March 2018, 09:14
Greg BakerAs far as I know, they just colourized the pages but none of the artwork was retouched. So the pages/panels that are missing the star and sickle are still missing them in the colour versin. But I can confirm it's there most of the time.
24 March 2018, 08:04
Greg BakerWell, I'm not quite happy with the landing struts. I used some leftover resin casting rejects from my Macchi M.52 project. They were rejected for a reason, but really the only option I had that was even close to the texture that I needed. Oh well, it's a made up plane anyway...
30 March 2018, 23:32
Greg BakerAlmost done with this one. I'm finally happy (enough) with the shade of grey/green. All that's left is the propeller and a few decals. In the book Tintin carves a new propeller out of a tree using only his pocket knife... so I figured I should do the same. It's not on par with bughunter's exquisite work, but I think it captures the rough craftsmanship of the subject well... 🙂
28 April 2018, 03:49
Spanjaardvery nice propeller, Tintin would have been proud of you 🙂 it looks really good.
28 April 2018, 14:42
Uwe KaedingTurned out very nice Greg, and the prop looks fantastic! Definitely looks different in green🙂
30 April 2018, 06:53
Greg BakerThanks guys. I had to go with the green version to avoid any direct comparisons with Uwe's build. Hmmm... maybe I should consider alternate colour schemes for ALL the copycat builds.😉
30 April 2018, 07:44
Greg BakerI decided to add a bit of cotton for some storm clouds for the base. Not quite sold on the lightning yet, butnit's growing on me...
6 May 2018, 14:38
Greg BakerSo I decided to add a little lightning lighting instead. Hard to get a good pic, but it looks great on the shelf.
7 May 2018, 14:35
Nam Soo LeeWow I love your LED effect. Maybe below the prop is bombed out so badly.
8 May 2018, 00:19
Greg BakerThanks Spanjaard. I've made it my quest to impress you!
I'm not sure I'll be able to impress bobinspokaloo though... since.. it more or less is the final product.😉
8 May 2018, 02:17
Martin OostromIn the book Tintin cuts the prop by hand. But the curve is the wrong way, so when he fires up the engine, the plane moves backwards. Then he cuts another prop by hand 😄
9 May 2018, 04:52
Greg BakerLOL! Yes, right! Your comment makes more sense now. I didn't think to do that... now I'm regretting it. 😄
9 May 2018, 05:14
bughunterOh, a wooden propeller 👍 That is damn cool, you know. I assume, you used a pocket knife too?
11 January 2019, 08:23
Greg BakerNot quite... it only LOOKS like I did.😉 however, there is a direct line between that wooden propellor and one of yours. I hadn't really thought of that as an option until I saw one of your amazing builds. I'm about to attempt it again for my paper-to-plastic Udet U-12 Flamingo build... so we'll see if I learned anything...😉
11 January 2019, 08:30
Greg BakerOk. Now that there's just painting (and waiting) a red checkerboard rocket on my Destination Moon project upgrade, let's give my Soviet Polikarpov a bit of an upgrade too!
14 February 2022, 07:10
CuajeteVery nice progress, Greg!
What car models are at the background of pic 24?
14 February 2022, 18:54
Greg BakerThanks Cuajete. This is an older project that I'm revamping, so the cars in the background of pic 24 are already finished. They're a) The Opel Olympia (King Ottokar's Scepter (Opel Olympia) | Album by strobez (1:72)) and b) the Puegot 403 (The Castafiore Emerald (Peugeot 403) | Album by strobez (1:72))
14 February 2022, 21:11
Greg BakerThere we go! Finally I can do away with all the « ghost plane » criticism! Just a few touch ups to where I had to pop the engine cowling off to add the motor.
15 February 2022, 06:36
Uwe KaedingLooking good Greg - where are you getting the files for the figures (and the XFLR for that matter...)? Been looking for the colourised version of this book in English, but it looks like that is only available in e-book format. Is that where your sample pages came from?
15 February 2022, 11:53
Greg BakerThanks Uwe! There's no printed version of the colourized Land of the Soviets in English. It's only available as an eBook (I have it on the official Tintin iPad app).
17 February 2022, 00:54
Greg BakerThanks everyone! It does make all the difference. So, I'm going to go back through my Tintin collection and make some upgrades and improvements. Getting a resin printer was a real boon to my « not quite mainstream » projects. 😉
23 February 2022, 06:53
Nils Steyaertlove it, Greg!
the tintin figurine in the cockpit is a nice touch 👍
10 October 2023, 07:11
Greg BakerThanks Nils. I had a bit of a shelf mishap, so I'm in the process of repairing/updating my Tintin projects, so there's plenty more where that came from~
10 October 2023, 14:43
Greg BakerThanks for asking. I'm almost back to "normal". I'll be doing a big update with some new pics soon!
25 January, 03:26
CuajeteFantastic update. Congrats!
That plane couldn't fly alone 😉
Milou had to stay on land.
We can see the blinking lightning flashes someway?
3 March, 19:06
Greg BakerThank Cuajete! Technically, Milou is stuffed down at the bottom of the cockpit somewhere. 😉
3 March, 19:45
Album info
The build album for the Soviet monoplane that appears in the album Tintin 01: In the Land of the Soviets. The build, like the plane in the adventure, is based on the Polikarpov I-1 and uses the 1/72 scale kit available from ICM.
