Czech Master Resin 1/72
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History
Let Aircraft Industries of Kunovice in the Czech Republic has been building its line of Blanik sailplanes since 1958 and have sold over 3,000 of them to date. The Blaniks are unusual in this day of fibreglas and composite sailplanes in that they are of traditional all-metal aluminum construction. Instead of a quiet, gentle thump, they rattle and bang like a bag of tin cans when landing. That apart, they are beautiful pieces of flying sculpture and they do fly very well having a nominal glide ratio of 28: 1. That is to say if you’re a mile up you can glide 28 miles without thermal or wind-current lift. The main identifying difference between the L-13 and the L-23 is the latter’s T-tail, which was adopted to avoid damage when landing in rough fields. Let’s Blanik line is named for Blanik Mountain; a 2,093-foot (638m) high mountain in the Czech Republic.
As they did with the earlier Blanik L-13/TG-10C Kestrel, the U. S. Air Force Academy has chosen the L-23 for ab initio training of cadets and designated it the TG-10B Merlin.
CMR’s Let L-13 Blanik/TG-10C Kestrel, Kit No. G3,1 was reviewed in the April 2008 issue of this magazine.
The Kit
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As they have done in at least one previous kit, CMR have included two complete fuselages in this kit to cater for very minor differences. In this instance the difference is in optional tailwheel installations. I think this is a quite unnecessary extravagance. CMR also include two sets of two vac canopies to cater for a mid-canopy frame or its absence. The fuselages, wings and tail are each cast in one piece. There is a total of 25 resin and four clear plastic parts in this kit along with a photo-etched fret of 19 Eduard pre-painted details. An Eduard, die-cut, self-adhesive mask set is also included for painting the canopy. The decal sheet provides for ten different planes; five of them being Air Force Academy trainers.
Options allow for different wheel installations, two different styles of canopies which can be open or closed and spoilers extended or retracted.
A modeler of average competence and enthusiasm could easily build a very satisfactory model, painted and decaled, out-of-the-box in a weekend. I plan to separate the elevator from the stabilizer and position the elevator as it would normally be on the ground, hanging down against its travel-stop.
CMR provide 13 pages of instructional material with this kit; one page on assembly, seven on painting and decaling and five of reference photos of various L-23s. CMR’s glider kits come packed in the best boxes used by any kit makers; they are very strong lidded boxes that never arrive pre-crushed, as do so many others.
My sincere thanks to Petr Buchar and Radoslav Kazda of Czech Master Resin for providing the kit for this review.
Conclusion
Another fine kit of a subject that will never be considered by a major kit maker. This is the 30th glider kit I CMR’s line and I hope there will be many more. Now the Bowlus Baby Albatross would be a nice subject for the31st; don’t you think? This kit should cost about $35.00 from dealers in North America.
References
As with the previously reviewed L-13, all my research was done on the
internet. The best place to start is with a Google of Let Aircraft Industries.
