Eduard 1/144 Avia CS-92
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Introduction
 No
need to go into a history on the Messerschmitt Me 262. There are other
sources of references one can track down for all versions of this well
known, German, end-of-WW2 jet. A number of countries ended up taking a
couple post-war and made their own versions of it, Avia being one of them.
My goal for this kit was to motivate me to model again and while it accomplished
that goal, getting there took longer than anticipated. I was hoping to
finish this kit in a weekend but ended up taking a month because of "other
things" (like life) getting in the way. Is it possible to build this
in a weekend? Definitely! In fact it's possible to build this in a day
if you have time - and if you aren't constantly interrupted by life and
its idiocyncracies.
Construction
 There
is actually very little to construction. Paint the cockpit/interior (and
it's a very decent interior if you close the canopy), put some nose weight
in and you can glue the fuselage halves together. I ended up adding Tamiya-tape
seat belts but that was all I added to this kit - everything else is out
of the box. There was a little seam needing attention on the top of the
nose, but the rest of the fuselage seam dissappeared after sanding.
 Now
that the fuselage halves were glued together the rest could fall together.
If you're careful you can glue the one-piece wing to the fuselage with
no seam at the wing root. Unfortunately - especially for my build - there
were seams on the underside (where the wing met the fuselage) that needed
extra attention. It could have been how I assembled it, but be aware,
just in case. After gluing the engine nacelles together (two piece halves
and intake and exhuast cone for each side) take your time assembling these
to the wing as well. I had seams on the top that had to be dealt with.
Those and the underside wing-to-fuselage seams were the only major work
required as the horizontal tail piece seams were dealt with by light sanding.
 Now
the aircraft was mostly assembled I turned my attention to gluing the
canopy to the model, since I was keeping it closed. I did a little bit
of masking for the frames but only the major seams. I used decal strips
for the rest of the frames. There was a little seam work to be done where
the canopy glued to the model, but some of it was due to my own stupidity.
I glued on the canopy before touching up the inside of the cockpit where
a seam had to be sanded behind the rear cockpit. Doh! So, I cracked one
side, carefully "hinged" the canopy and passed a brush underneath
for the touch up. Then I glued the canopy back down and worked on the
seam. And to think I've been modeling for years and years...
 I
was able to paint once all the major pieces were together. Since it was
a single, overall-color painting was a breeze and I used "Aircraft
Colors" (Aeromaster's version of Vallejo acrylics) RLM 02 Grau. It
went on with no difficulties at all and after a day of drying I put on
a coat of Future. Once the Future dried then I turned my attention to
the decals and here you need to be careful. The wing-walk "stripes"
I mistakenly thought was a one-piece, all-encompasing decal, when in fact
the decal film was only in the place of where the "stripes"
were. Not paying attention caused me to lose of side of the wing-walk
decals so I opted to not put on the other decal either and instead drew
on the stripes with a .005" Micron marker. Doesn't look great, but
also doesn't look half-bad, either.
 One
more coat of Future over the decals and it was time for an application
of my-own-mix oil color grey to pop out the neatly engraved panel lines.
The main parts of the canopy's frames were applied with painted decals
while the smaller frames were hand painted. A final coat of Polly Scale
dull coat and I had a finished, 1/144th Avia CS.92. The base is just a
picture frame with grey poster board as the base, and the lines drawn
with a .01" Micron marker. Glue the plane to the base and voila!
A completed model.
Conclusion
 This
was a very nice kit to try and get the modeling motivation back. Not too
difficult and since this was the bagged edition of the kit there were
no photoetch pieces to worry about. Sure, I could add antennas and the
like but that would defeat the purpose of this build which was a kind-of-quick
and relatively easy model to get me modeling again.
Thanks to Eduard for the review
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