1/72 AModel SM-1/300 with additional wings

Gallery Article by Juergen “jott” Klinglhuber on Jan 20 2020

 

      

Mikhail Mil, as one of the world's leading exponents of rotorcraft design, was a contemporary of Nikolai Kamov at the TsAGI (Central Aero and Hydrodynamic Institute) during the 1930s. Given charge of his own design bureau in 1947, he became responsible for the first Soviet helicopter to go into quantity production. The Mi-1 prototype was completed and flown in September 1948 and was a compact machine with a fully-enclosed metal-skinned fuselage. It was built to a single main rotor configuration, with a small anti-torque rotor at the rear. The Mi-1 made its public debut at the Tushino Air Display in 1951, by which time it was already in production and service with the Soviet armed forces.

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Polish production began with the standard Mi-1 late in 1955 under the designation SM-1 with a licence-built version. This type was also operated at The Polish Flight Research Center (Instytut Lotnictwa) in Warszawa for test purpose – in the shown model we see it with additional wings.

As you can see in the attached pictures I did have my troubles with the fit of the parts during assembly. The front section of the fuselage is from a clear sprue whilst the rear section is of different material and the alignment of both elements was far from “good”. Putty filler and sanding. Several times. Finally I was able to “fade out” the misalignment into an “okay” fit. I added some weight behind the cockpit panel but the bird is pretty “transparent” and therefore space to hide weight is limited – unfortunately, because the bird shows still a tendency for tail sitting. Last but not least I broke the attachment from all three blades to the main rotor head - twice, what a pity. I was able to recover but you might see it in the pic’s – right after the rotor head the blades are turning upwards too much now. So all in all a painful experiment, but once more I enjoyed to add another “rather uncommon model” to my collection. 

Juergen “jott” Klinglhuber

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Photos and text © by Juergen “jott” Klinglhuber