Classic Plane (Modellbaustudio Rhein-Ruhr) 1/72 scale
EXTRA 300

by Piotr Dmitruk

EXTRA 300

Academy's 1/48 scale Spitfire Mk.XIVe is available online from Squadron

Since the beginning of 1900s, famous German aerobatic pilot Walter Extra is manufacturing aerobatic special Extra 300 (1987 project), which still belongs to the best in its class. With carbon fiber wings and steel tube fuselage, covered with aluminium sheet and fabrics, its powered with 300HP Lycoming ARIO-540 engine. Then 300 L- low wing, oraz 300 S- single place variants were made. Two-seat version is piloted from the rear seat. Extra 300 is used with many civilian and military aerobatic teams.

It’s a short-run kit boxed in a very unattractive box. Parts are well moulded and fit very well. There is also xeroxed paper sheet with short story, drawings and barely usable pictures.

Czech made decals are superbly printed, crisp and thin. There are several painting variants in different boxes. My decals represented aeroplanes from the chilean Escuadrilla de Alta Acrobacia Halcones ("Falcons High Aerobatics Squad"). Those aircrafts didn’t have windows in lower fuselage, so I needed to fill the holes with epoxy resin.

There is no engine and You can see through the fuselage, so I made one from the scrapyard parts. Wings and empennage butt joints were reinforced with steel tubes, as well as with propeller blades. I’ve completed cockpit interior only after glueing together fuselage halves and cockpit floor. Tube construction and instrument panels were scratchbuilt, kits seats were improved, and the violet seatbelts were borrowed from Eduards color photoetched fret for TSR2 kit.

Cockpit interior looked empty, so I made pilots helmet in “Halcones” colors, and headphones set, and placed them in the cockpit.

After painting with Mr Base White and Tamiya paints, its became clear, that decals didn’t fit well to the fuselage contours.

Rest of the painting, including numbers and wing stars, were masked with Tamiya and Aizu tapes, and airbrushed. Only small white stencils were used.

Exhaust pipes were also tuned up with injection needles and painted with different shades of Alclad paints. Good old Humbrol gave the final gloss to the model.

To speed up drying, the model was placed in warm electric oven with fan turned on - a very useful trick.

All in all it’s a good kit, but effect is spoiled with badly designed decals.

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Model, Images and Text Copyright © 2011 by Piotr Dmitruk
Page Created 20 June, 2011
Last Updated 20 June, 2011

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