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HELLER 1:72 PZL 23 KARAS
Reviewer: Kevin Ronayne kevin.ronayne@nuigalway.ie
Kit Review submitted:
18 August 2002
The PZL 23 'Karas' was a 1930's Polish light bomber aircraft. The State Aviation Works (Panstwowe Zaklady Lotnicze - PZL) began design work in 1932, with the aircraft first flying in 1934. The P-23A entered service in the spring of 1936, followed later that year by the improved P-23B version. The P-23B accounted for some 210 of the 250 machines produced. The P-23 was powered by a licence-built Bristol Pegasus radial engine; initially, this was the 590 HP Pegasus II ('A'), followed by the 680 HP Pegasus VIII ('B'). Maximum bombload was 700 KG, with maximum speed of about 310 KMH. The aircraft was exported to Bulgaria as the PZL 43 Tchaika (Sea Gull), powered by Gnome-Rhone engines.
Although attempts were made to adapt the PZL 23 to the dive-bomber role, these proved unsuccessful. In the September 1939 German invasion, PZL 23's were used as conventional attack aircraft against German units, and suffered heavy losses. After the Soviet Union invaded the Eastern half of Poland, some surviving PZl 23's were evacuated to Romania. Pressed into Romanian service, they saw front-line action on the Eastern front until the end of the Stalingrad campaign at the start of 1943.
This is one of Heller's later releases, probably from the late 1970's or thereabouts. My particular kit comes from a huge stash of Heller kits bought in the early and mid 1990's when they were still freely (and cheaply) available. Since then, it has been reboxed by Smer. However, when I checked recently (Aug. 2002) on the Hannants Web site, it didn't appear to be available from either company. Of course, it's probably still available here and there, and will probably get re-released in the next couple of years, as is the way of these things.
The package is standard Heller issue: a two-piece box containing four main sprues in light grey plastic, as well as a small transparency sprue - 47 parts in total. The instruction leaflet is a four-page A4 booklet, with the instructions taking up just one page. There are three-way views on the facing page for the two subjects: a Romanian P-23A (1941-1942), and a Polish P-23B (1939). There are just a couple of alternative parts required for the two versions. Unfortunately, there is no ordnance provided. The decal sheet is compact but adequate. Paint colour callouts are in Humbrol, with some questionable colours being quoted.
The quality of the mold is well up to the later Heller standard, with finely raised panel lines in most places, and countersunk detail around the control surfaces. There was no real 'flash' to contend with, and no glaring mold seam. My experience with Smer re-issues of Heller kits is that there is little or no real drop in quality control in these areas.
I started by painting the entire fuselage interior in Humbrol 11 (silver). The instructions specified Hu 56 (aluminium), but I felt that a brighter, shinier finish was called for, based on what little I knew about Polish aircraft of the time. Note that the Smer instructions probably won't have any interior painting instructions. The fuselage inside walls contained quite a lot of framing and other detail, which is good given the amount of it that will be visible through the large canopy. The interior walls themselves seemed to have somewhat rough texture, which became more evident once paint was applied - maybe this was deliberate, as it's not really an issue with other Heller kits.
The main cockpit floor was a single part, with a huge hole in the back half for easy access to and from the ventral gondola. Just at the back of this is the dorsal gunners station, which consisted of three parts in the kit: a four-legged stand, a gunner's seat/gun platform, and the gun itself. For both the gunners seat and the front cover of the pilots seat, the quoted colour is Hu 100, which is (for me anyway), far too red a shade for seat fabric covering. I used a more realistic leather shade. The remainder of these parts was painted silver, as was the upper and lower surfaces of the floor. The rest of the interior detail consisted of the rear ventral machine gun, pilot's control stick, and main instrument panel (which was painted black with white detailing). As with the rest of the interior, all of these parts looked very realistic. It really does look as if someone went to serious trouble to research the cockpit interior.
After attaching the cockpit floor assembly to one of the fuselage halves, I then completed the fuselage assembly by adding the other half. The fit here was excellent, but I had to make sure that the floor set in the correct position instead of slanting to one side. It is actually a good fit, but it might not set in the correct position unless proper attention is given. The last interior parts were two lateral spars at the level of the fuselage/canopy junction. The main canopy was an excellent fit, with just the merest of gaps at the front, where it joins to the upper fuselage. Unfortunately, the attachment to the sprue left an ugly mark that took some time to clean up to my satisfaction.
To help in attaching the main wings at the correct angle, I added the tailplanes first. As on just about any single-engine piston powered aircraft, they are set completely flat. The kit comes with two sets of tailplane/elevator parts - I was building the P-23B, which had a larger set of elevators than on the 'A'. I had to be very careful because of some subtle warping that caused the vertical tail/rudder to tilt slightly to one side. If I hadn't noticed this and fixed it, I would have probably ended up attaching the tailplanes at the wrong angle, followed by the main wings! I don't think that the warping is a fault of the kit - more likely this is the result of the kit sitting in an attic for almost ten years, with constant fluctuations in temperature. I'm probably lucky that this doesn't happen more often.
Eventually, I got everything just about into position, although I needed a small amount of filler at the underside of the starboard wing root/fuselage junction. The spat units consisted of a single wheel trapped inside spat halves, with a transparent part near the top of each spat - presumably a landing light. The spats include detail for an area of flexible covering. Presumably, this enclosed a shock absorber-strut, in the same way as on the Ju 87. Again, there was a small amount of 'give' when attaching these units to the wings, so I had to make doubly sure that everything was setting at the angle I wanted to. When all was said and done, a head-on examination showed everything looking correct. In terms of distance off the ground, the wingtips were about .5 mm apart, which is acceptable for a model of this size.
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
Before adding the engine unit, I added the remaining parts, including the big exhaust pipes on either side of the fuselage. In the instructions, these were supposed to be painted bronze, but I used a dull shade of rust instead. Lastly, there was what looks like a small radio mast fairing which was fitted on top of the canopy. This was only used on the 'B' version. The kit also includes a pair of large slats for the inner section of the wing leading edges - these were only fitted on the P-23A. The engine unit appeared to be straightforward, and included a separate front engine block section with two pipes linking back to the top of each cylinder unit. Attaching the engine block (with propeller installed in the usual fashion) to the fuselage was easy. However, attaching the cowling halves to the engine block was troublesome. There are attachment pins on some of the cylinders designed to match some holes on the inside of the cowling parts. In practice, it was quite tricky - maybe I needed to spend more time on dry fitting and adjusting parts. The front cowling ring was painted bronze as instructed, although the Heller box artwork doesn't show this. For the record, the large propeller should be painted in a natural wood colour according to the Heller instructions.
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
For both subjects, the basic colour scheme is the same: Hu 86 (light olive) on the upper surfaces, with Hu 65 light blue on the underside. Hu 65 is the standard colour for RLM 65 Hellblau, and is probably a little too blue - I used Hu 147 instead, which is quite a bit paler. It was the upper surface that was the real problem. According to the indispensable IPMS Stockholm colour charts, this should be a shade of khaki, not olive. I ended up using the now discontinued Hu 142, which is apparently a match for a shade of khaki used on Polish aircraft for that time, although probably not quite dark enough for that used on bomber aircraft such as the PZL-23. Of course, I could well be completely wrong on this one! One thing I definitely got right was the fact that on the Polish aircraft, the upper surface colour 'wraps around' the fuselage, except directly under the wings. This unusual scheme is actually visible on the Heller boxart, and is apparent on the painting guide. However, if I hadn't seen it already on a full four-view plate, I might have missed it - it isn't exactly obvious on the instructions.
The decals are the genuine Heller article - very thin and very 'flat', with no surrounding carrier film at all on some of the decals. Under a single coat of matt varnish, they blended seamlessly with the surrounding paintwork. Apart from a small amount of 'bleeding' in the crouching tiger emblems, they are in excellent register. The instructions correctly indicate the unusual asymmetric nature of the national markings on the upper wings, with the starboard insignia being much farther inboard than the marking on the port wing. Because no full starboard view is shown anywhere, you don't see that the national marking on the starboard side of the tail is oriented differently to that on the port side. On the port side, the upper forward-facing quarter is red; on the starboard side, it's white. This is evident from the Smer artwork shown above.
A profile that I downloaded from the Web - unfortunately, I cannot remember from where. This shows the 'wraparound' scheme to good effect, with some unusual demarcation just above the ventral gun - this differs from what is shown in the kit, and may or may not be correct. Also, note the bomb attachment points underneath the fuselage and inner wing sections. The tiger emblem is the one supplied in the kit. Note: I tried my best to reduce this image in dimensional size, but the physical size only got bigger. So I'm including the image 'as is'.
The dimensional accuracy looks very good, as I would expect with a newer (so to speak) Heller kit. More impressive than this is the general level of detail and accuracy throughout the kit. I have already mentioned the cockpit, but the external detail is very impressive. For example, the slits and protrusions on the fuselage surface just behind the main cowling are reproduced in minute detail. Also shown is the fixed machine gun firing through the engine block on the starboard side of the fuselage. One interesting feature of the PZL-23 is the slightly 'squat' profile of the tail/rudder unit. This would be an easy detail to get wrong, but it looks just right in the kit.
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
A real gem from Heller - one of their best kits, and all the better because it's of an unusual subject. Apart from recessed panel lines, and a few bombs thrown in, I can't think of any other way in which this kit could be significantly improved upon.
There were only a couple of useful information pages in English that I could find on the Web was. One was at the Polish Aviation History Page, created and maintained by Robert Postowicz. The PZL P.23 page is here. Another page was at the The Flightline World War II Aviation Archive - the relevant page is here. Both of these pages were quite helpful. As already stated, I made my colour choices - rightly or wrongly - based on Urban Fredriksson's Color Reference Charts at IPMS Stockholm.
There isn’t much I can add to Kevin’s excellent review of this kit. I totally agree with him, and also consider this kit as a gem. Internal detail level is superb for a 70´s kit, and can even compete with most modern mainstream products. The raised panel lines really didn’t bother me and, due to the good fit of parts, not much got lost when sanding.
© Carlos Giani 2009
My kit is an original 70´s release, which I picked up in a sale. Ergo, just an A4 one-sided technical Data-exploded view-decaling-painting instructions sheet (if you have ever built an old Heller kit, then you’ll know what I mean). All parts were in excellent condition, the glazing unscratched. Wanting something a bit more exotic for my collection, I decided to build the “A” version (Romania), and I differed from Kevin’s build as follows:
I painted the interior light grey (no references here, just my desire to do it this way)
According to the drawings shown on Kevin’s review, I do used Humbrol H65 for the wing and stabilizer undersides, and opted for Revell R46 for the upper sides / fuselage. I think that the later is a good compromise between khaki and olive.
I painted the exhausts with Humbrol H171 antique bronze.
For the wheels and the spats flexible covering I used Revell R9.
Of course the shorter, “A”-version stabilizers were used.
Two parts representing extra wing surface radiators were glued onto the wing leading edges, near to the wing roots (see photo).
No antenna.
© Carlos Giani 2009
I used some Romanian insignia from Azur´s I.A.R. 39 (superbly printed by Aviprint), just because they are so beautiful. However, I decided to use the kit´s code number decals (placed on the fin) and, despite their age, they performed fantastically, with the carrier film disappearing completely under a coat of Humbrol H135 (I wonder how some Tamigawademy decals will perform in 30 years…!). Hurray!
Sincerely warmly recommended! This build was pure fun.
© Carlos Giani 2009
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