Building A-Model's 1/72nd Tomashevich "Pegas" (Pegasus) By Michael Kendix

Background

This kit was reviewed in an earlier issue of Internet Modeler. Briefly, according to the kit's instructions, the "Pegas" was designed as a light bomber and ground attack aeroplane for use against tanks and infantry. The primary design criteria for this aeroplane were simplicity and economy: it was constructed of wood and inexpensive, high-carbon steel. Designed by Major General Dmitry L. Tomashevich, the prototype was completed in January 1943. Unfortunately, the aeroplane was not recommended for mass production because of poor manœuverabilty.

In the Box

The kit is packaged in an attractive "proper" box that has a lift-off lid. There are four sprues of smooth grey plastic parts, and a small sprue of two clear parts for a windscreen and a tiny window. This is a short run kit: there is a fair amount of flash and careful sanding and pre-fitting is required to obtain a decent result. The parts are generally overly thick so the modeller may want to replace some pieces as his ability or conscience warrants. However, this is an unusual subject and this is the "price" one must pay for a non-mainstream kit. The kit offers three options: prototypes 01, 02 and 03. I selected 02 simply because that was the one I found in the scant references I was able to track down and the kit's decals are for that version too.

Interior Detail

Truthfully, there is not a great deal of interior parts and photographs of the same were not readily available to me. I assembled the cockpit floor, seat and control stick. I sprayed the interior in a medium grey and added some seatbelts made with strips of foil from a champagne bottle (No expense spared here!). I eschewed the kit's window because I was concerned it would become scratched and damaged during the sanding and filling process. I planned to use Model Master "Clear Parts Cement & Window Maker", which worked out fine. I closed the fuselage and hoped for the best. One advantage of this subject's design is the almost complete absence of panel lines so I was able to fill and sand with abandon, not having to worry about reestablishing panel lines.

The Engines

Meanwhile, it was time to figure out a way to deal with the detailed and somewhat prominent power plants. One option, recommended by Caz Dalton in his excellent build up of the same kit, was to replace the kit's engines with the excellent aftermarket ones manufactured by Neomega. I figured I had already splashed out enough on this kit (almost thirteen bucks), so I decided to work with what I had. Cleaning up the flash on all those cylinders took a while and the job was less pristine than could have been achieved by buying the aftermarket engine. I added pushrods made from 0.010-inch plastic rod, carefully sanded all the molding seams off the engine exhausts, breaking one of them in the process: because I needed to have both exhausts looking the same, I scratch-built two new ones. The kit's cowls had a considerable molding seam on both inside and outside. Fortunately, Prototype 02 had the "Half" cowls and so after cleaning up one of them, I cut it in half and used one half for each engine. I also added a couple of propeller bosses to the replace the detail on the kit's propellers.

Fuselage and Flying Surfaces Subassembly

The wing and tail detail is nicely done and fairly clean. Repeated dry fitting and careful sanding was the order of the day here. A fair amount of putty and sanding and I was able to make the pieces fit tolerably well. Before I added the engines, I painted the fuselage and flying surfaces. First I painted the underside with Testors Light Blue, which unfortunately is gloss, though I did not realize this until the paint was already sprayed on the model. Once that had dried, which took two days, I masked off and sprayed the topside with medium green. Once this had been completed, I added the engines. Here again, taking Caz Dalton's lead, I left the port side door down: this has the advantage of not having to carefully fit this piece into the rest of the fuselage.

Landing Gear, Ordnance and Details

The landing gear was straightforward to assemble and attach. I decided to select the easiest option for the weaponry; namely, cleaning up one large bomb rather than several smaller, flash-ridden bombs. I added a small spinner on the front of the bomb in addition to a grab handle on the fuselage, a footstep, a gun-sight, and a pitot tube on the starboard side of the fuselage.

The kit's decals are overly thick and despite several layers of Future floor polish (acrylic wax), the red stars showed considerable silvering, so I replaced them with some decals from Techmod's excellent red star decal set. The winged horse decal was not replaceable, so I brushed on some Future and while it was still wet, I put the decal in place. After it was in position, I carefully wiped the excess Future off with a Q-tip dipped in Windex. I added control wires and engine mounting wires, using 0.050-inch straight wire from Small Parts Inc. When all this had dried, I gave the model a coat of Testors Clear Flat. Finally I added the windshield and made a small side window with "Clear Parts Cement & Window Maker". Attaching the antenna atop the windshield presented some difficulty, and it kept getting detached easily but eventually I managed to get the entire assemblage into the model case in one piece.

Conclusion

As mentioned above, this is an unusual looking subject and despite the thick molding and flash, it is a worthwhile subject, in my view. With some care, patience and not a little sanding and filling, a fairly decent model can be obtained. I recommend this project conditionally for a modeller who has some experience and is willing to take a crack at a decent short run kit.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Matt Bittner and Mike Lampros for help, encouragement and references. Thanks also to Caz Dalton on whose previous excellent build at "Modeling Aircraft of the Soviet VVS 1930-50", I relied considerably.

Reference

"Aviation World Magazine", #4/99, Ukraine, 1999.