BROPLAN 1:72 VALMET L-70 VINKA
'INBOX Review'

 

Reviewer: Johan De Wolf (rec.models.scale)   

Kit Details

History

As their Saab Safir fleet began to age, the Finnish airforce drew up a specification for a replacement. Design work by Valmet started in the early 70’s, and the result flew for the first time in the summer of 1975. As it had been 30 years since the Finnish aircraft industry had designed and build an aircraft from scratch it had taken a considerable effort to get the Vinka of the drawing board and into the air. However the result was successful and the type entered service in the early 80’s with the last of the 30 ordered being delivered to the airforce in 1982. The L-70 Vinka is an all metal aircraft that is easily on par with other trainers in its class like the SF-260. Valmet tried to market the type internationally but no orders followed. Also the redesigned L-80 and L-90 failed to attract orders. In the Finnish airforce the type is well liked and is still going strong after 25 years of daily service. 

The kit

This kit is available in bagged and boxed form. Oddly enough the boxed kit was a few euros cheaper than the bag, so that’s the one I picked up. The sturdy box contains two small white vacuform plates, one clear vacuform plate with the canopy (no spare) and landing light cover, a light grey sprue with smaller injection molded parts and an A4-size instruction leaflet. The vacuform parts have well defined and accurate surface detail. The short-run injection molded parts look a bit rough at first, but will be perfectly usable after a bit of clean up. Although the canopy is clear, mine had two small bumps caused by dust being trapped in between the mold and the plastic during the forming of the part. The instructions give you a parts location diagram, a construction diagram (exploded view), a detail drawing for the cockpit and 3 colour schemes. There are no decals with this kit.

Accuracy

Very good. Dimensions are all within 1mm of the true figure. Surface detail is very accurate and convincing. The kit compares very favorably with photographs of the real thing. 

Construction 

Although it is a vacuform and you will still have to do the tedious sanding, the injection molded parts will greatly reduce the time needed for finding/scratchbuilding detail parts. The cockpit will take up most time building as here are most of the parts located. In all 5 vacuform and 11 injection molded parts go into this area. Although this is plenty of detail I would want to add rudder pedals, seat padding (not always present in parked machines) and seatbelts. The bottom wing half is in one piece, ensuring the correct dihedral. To this the top left and right halves are added. After the wings are on, all that remains are the canopy, landing gear and a few antennae.

Painting

As seems usual with the cottage industry there are no colour details for the interior. The outside colours are given in FS numbers and equivalent numbers from the Humbrol paint range. Three colour schemes are given:

-          The bare metal scheme with dayglo panels they were delivered in.

-          The 3-tone scheme adopted soon after delivery consisting of dark brown green/ light bronze green over light grey. Again with dayglo bands and black anti glare panel.

-          Same scheme as the second one but now with the complete tail and wingtips in dayglo. This scheme is used from the mid 90’s up till today.

There are no decals with this kit. If you could manage to hunt down one you could find decals for the Vinka on Gal Decals sheet nr 72002.

Conclusion

Since the advent of resin kits, vacuforms have gotten in decline. However there is still one prolific producer of vacuforms and that’s the Polish firm Broplan. Although not always exactly cheap they produce some high quality kits of mostly forgotten types. This kit of the Vinka is a good example. If you have never tried a vacuform, this kit would offer a reasonably simple starting point. It is a very nice kit. Too bad that there are no decals. Roundels should be easy enough to find, but the registration codes and the slanted tail number will be rather more difficult to turn up.

References

 

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