1/48 OEZ Su-25K Frogfoot

by Jan Mikes

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Czech Republic National Day 2004  

 

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

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

Photos and text © by Jan Mikes