Polikarpov I-180 A Model 1:72

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djos

Airman 1st Class
204
104
Nov 16, 2009
Belgrade, Serbia
Hi to all

Finally after many years of restarting of this project and abounding it, this small plane is finished.

Amodel Polikarpov I-180 is......very specific model. First when you open a box, you get something what is not exactly what you wish to work on, lot of flash, very bad surface, lot of places where plastic is just missing...etc.
But if you want something different...than Amodel is only choice. Same was with this bird. So lot of sanding, lot of putty, scribing of pannel lines - too heavy , lot of patience.....and at the end i am very satisfied with this batplane - Polikarpov.

Very short history of this plane which was responsible for the lost of one of the most famous Soviet pilots.
I-180 was derived from the scout plane of constructor Ivanov, a very light construction driven by M-87A engine, with850 hp from constructor Tumansky (developed from Gnome-Rhone engine).
One of test flights was performed on December 1938, at a temperature of minus 25 degrees. The plane was operated by Valery Chkalov personally (twice awarded hero of the Soviet Union). After a short test flight on returning to the airport, overheating of the the engine resulted in sudden drop in engine speed, which led to the crash and the death of Valery Chkalov.



The history of this aircraft registers two more falls and almost killing of another famous Soviet pilot JV Suprun. After all investigations that followed, special commission has not been able to find the causes of accidents, it was decided to produce a series of 10 pieces of I-180S with engine M-88R which had a 1,000 hp engine and armament of 2 cannons and 2 synchronized machine guns.
The prototype with this engine reaches speeds of almost 600 km / h, but the total score was negative. At this time war in Europe is already raging and next variant of I-180s was abandoned even it was nearly finished.

I hope that i was not boring too much but i tough that this info make this post more interesting. Now pictures of the model
Unfortunately i had issue with making pictures of red color
so on the pictures preshading is almost invisible. Anyway this was a prototype and unfortunately fly only few hours....so... and thanks for looking. Regards














 

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