Czech Model 1/32 T-33 Colombian Air Force
By Ed Fuquay
When Czech Models released this kit, I immediately thought of building a machine belonging to the Colombian Air Force. Reference material is hard to come by, but thanks to my Colombian friends and extensive research on the Internet I found a few good images that gave me a good idea of what these machines looked like.
Then the kit arrived and I was in for a journey that tested the limits of my patience, resourcefulness and took me to modeling corners that I had never been to.
I was very impressed when I first opened the box, the kit looks great, colored photo etched, beautifully casted resin detail parts and exquisite surface detail on the plastic parts. Up to that point everything was just peachy. I built the cockpit, engine intake trunks, landing gears and many other subassemblies. No problems there.
Where everything started to turn south was when I started assembling the fuselage and all of its components. The areas of great difficulty were aligning the engine intake trunk and the outer intakes. The fit is just poor. I spend so much time in just this areas that in the same amount of time I could have probably built two Tamiya 1/32 scale Mustangs!
The wing-fuselage joint also took me a while to get it right. I had only once before fought so hard a model, another Czech Model product, the 1/48 Skyknight! After using clamps, rubber bands, super glue and using many expletives I got the joint right. After lots of putty, sanding, and elbow grease the model was primed and painted in a high gloss black enamel.
The national insignias were airbrushed on using homemade masks. Numerals were printed onto decal paper with a Laserjet printer. In the end, the model looks great and sits on the shelf.
© Ed Fuquay 2016
This article was published on Wednesday, March 16 2016; Last modified on Wednesday, March 16 2016