Scarab 1/72 Lavochkin La 176

SCARAB/SKARABEY 1:72 LAVOCHKIN LA-176

Reviewer: Richard Stracey (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted: 1 September 2001

Aircraft:
The LA-176 should be better known. I could find very little information on it but according to the Soviet authorities it was the first fighter to break the sound barrier. This it did, piloted by O. Sokolovski on the 26^th. December 1948 and in 1949 at 7,000m reached a speed of 1105kmh (M 1.02) in level flight. The 176 was a prototype fighter as it was armed with one 37mm and two 23mm cannons. The Mig 15 and LA-176 were both powered by an RD45F (RR Nene) of 2270kg thrust or a VK-1 of 2700kg thrust engines. The Mig 15 went into production and the 176 into obscurity. It had a wingspan of 8.59m and length of 10.97m.

The Kit Review:
This Russian made kit consists of 42 hard grey parts and comes in a flimsy box with adequate instructions. (Addendum: Information supplied by Simon Skinner suggests the translation of the company name is Skarabey, not Scarab as reported. If anyone else can confirm this, that would be appreciated - Ed)

The cockpit tub has sufficient detail with decals for dash, side consoles and seatbelts. Weight is required before the fuselage halves are joined. There is plenty of flash and the mating surfaces need sanding. This doesn’t matter as there are no locating lugs and the fuselage halves go together well but many of the panel lines don’t match up.

The jet tail pipe (8) needs quite a lot of sanding to fit and although the wings fit very well the fuselage/wing joint requires a fair bit of filler. The tail planes are not a good fit and the tabs need trimming as they foul each other. The six wing fences are commendably fine, certainly finer than the rest of the kit and the “trenches”into which they fit. I glued them into place and after they were dry flooded the “trenches”with white glue (Kristal Klear) which did the trick.

The canopy is thick and has no frame lines to assist painting. The various struts, gun barrels and pitot tube (22/23/26/29/30 & 31) are better replaced with Contrail tube and rod. All in all, this is a quite crude (limited run?) kit but having a liking for early jets and the fact that Matchfix/Hasajimi are not likely to issue a 176, this is the only “game in town”.

The decals are for a bare metal aircraft “red 02”and one point to watch is the fact that the decal backing film is in one piece so that each item needs trimming out. Otherwise they are fine. I know of two other kits produced by Scarab. They are a Mig 9 and Mig 9 UTI, both of the same quality & style of the 176.

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