KOVOZAVODY PROSTEJOV (KP) 1 Was Monty's Triple'

Brian Derbyshire

I usually have little to do with what my wife refers to as ‘little buzzy planes’ so when I received this kit I had to do some immediate research. My files contained one lonely page from (I think) an old FlyPast, with line plan and head-on views of the aircraft, plus a big colour sideview, on one side, and a colour photo of the same (restored) example on the other. I did some scan-and-scale work to produce 1/72 drawings, and found the front end of the kit to be a reasonable match to these. The tail unit's a bit small, and the rear fuselage is noticeably short and over-tapered. This of course plays havoc with the invasion stripes.) The kit itself is neat and simple. It's Spitfire size, but looks smaller, and couldn't help imagining the sprues in a poly bag with a Mk Airfix header sheet.

This kit, alas, is not to the KP standards remember Avia B-534, Mezek) but more reminiscent of the early era of the cottage industry. Apart from the cabin floor and the wing/fuselage joint, there are no location aids at all, not even a propeller shaft. therefore had some drilling and pinning to do, and of course) some serious and tedious thinning of the wing trailing edges.

On the other hand, the single large transparency needed only a little fettling to fit rather well, and a simple cardboard jig made it quite easy to get the dihedral right. There's filling and fettling to be done around the wing trailing edge and the tailplane/fuselage joint the tailplane had a severe list to starboard). The yawning hole in the cowling under the spinner was easily filled by a row of old Frog Skua cylinders glued to a scrap of sheet, and a row of tiny pegs replaced the post-war) exhaust collector pipe. The undercarriage is thick and coarse, but in the absence of cast white-metal replacements it'll have to do. The result actually doesn't look all that bad.