Ardpol 1/72 resin Halberstadt Cl.II By Grzegorz Mazurowski

History

Halberstadt Cl.II was one of the first, and probably the most popular, plane in the German Cl class. As all Cl planes, it was designed as a fast, small and agile two-seater equipped with strong engine, with performances similar to the contemporary fighters. These airplanes were originally intended to be used as escort fighters but finally ended mostly as a ground attack and fast reconnaissance planes. Halberstadt Cl.II entered service in July 1917 and over 900 examples were produced. After the war many of them were used in Poland, mostly during early stages of the Polish-Bolshevik war in 1919-20.

The kit

Typically for Ardpol from Poland, the kit is carefully packed in the colourful box. The kit itself consists of resin parts (wings are taped to the pieces of cardboard for safety), detailed instruction showing process of assembly step by step in Polish and English, small fret of the PE parts, small acetate foil with control panel details printed in black and finally the sheet of decals. All the resin parts are packed in zip-bags.

All parts are moulded in usual light yellow resin. Moulding quality is excellent as usual, wings with very good ribs imitation and sharp, realistic trailing edges, and fuselage halves with thin walls and many beautifully rendered details on both, outer and inner sides.

The smaller parts have similar quality: excellent scale copy of the Mercedes engine, interior details including the floor with the fuel tank, tiny pushrods for the control surfaces, various struts, wheels and the armament. All that is spiced by a small but extremely useful PE fret, including such necessary details like spoked wheels, seatbelts, detailed radiators, control panel and some other stuff, including a cool ammo drum for observer's Parabellum.

Decals and painting schemes:

Provided, high quality, decals allow you to build two variants of the "Halbie", both with lozenged wings (though lozenge decals aren't included): original German WWI plane with "transition" crosses and "III" individual marking, and Polish airplane from the early period of the Polish-Bolshevik War, with early unoutlined Polish national markings.

Conclusion:

Very good kit of an extremely interesting airplane, and probably will be a good seller, as popular Pegasus short-run injected kit of this plane is out of production. Ardpol's high quality should please every demanding modeller, but I don't recommend this kit for absolute beginners - it is a resin kit, and a biplane with all those struts and rigging which need some skills above average to glue it all together.

Last thing I want to add: Ardpol! We are waiting for Hannover Cl.II/III to complete your cool collection of the Cl planes. I hope we won't wait too long!

Thanks to Ardpol for the review kit!