As Czech National
Day was approaching I realized that this year –again- I have not done a single
model of Czech airplane this year…shame on me.
I have been working on projects like Iranian Tomcats, Eritrean Flanker or
Indian Mirage 2000 …subjects quite distant from Central Europe.
So to fulfill my
‚patriotic duty‘ , I am here with my old, old 1/48 OEZ Su-25K
in Czechoslovak AF colours. The kit is from OEZ line, released back in
late 1980s. The kit has recessed panel lines, and while it is not equal in
quality to today’s top products, it is very good kit even these days. (And it
is still THE only accurate Frogfoot in quarter scale)
This kit has been re-released many times in the 1990s, last time under
KoPro label. I finished this model in 1992 when I was seventeen years old.
My model’s subject
was Su-25 ‘Anca’ named after
the naked girl sitting on the bed of flowers that is painted on the right engine
cowling. The sharkmouth makes this Frogfoot even more attractive.
One more interesting
part of marking: On the right engine cowling is painted crest of city of Ostrava.
On quite a few profiles of this airplane I have seen, it is mistakenly said that
the crest is of city of Pardubice because the Frogfoot regiment was based there.
Now, why would unit paint crest of other city then of the city where it bases?
The explanation is simple: the crest does not honor city where Frogfoots has
their base, but it was to symbolize unit’s name - ‘Ostravsky’ regiment.
The unit was given name Ostravsky to honor its participation in liberation of
this Czech city in the times of World War 2 (the unit flown Il-2 Stormoviks
during the WW2).
Click on
images below to see larger images
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The sharkmouth and
naked girl painting lasted for very short time and crew was ordered by superiors
to remove ‘non standard’ parts of marking (nosearts and other
‘non-standard’ parts of marking were not tolerated in communist era CzAF ).
Only crest of city of Ostrava could remain.
The Frogfoot is
painted in standard CzAF five colour ‘Central European Scheme’. I used
paintbrush. The decals were released as a gift inside one of Czech magazines for
modellers in 1989, they were never sold in shop. May be there is decal sheet for
this machine on the market (the scheme is simply too cool to be ignored by
aftermarket decal manufacturers)
So, I hope you enjoy
my sharkmouth Frogfoot,
Jan
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