Voka-Gran Ltd
1/72 Mi-1 “Hare”
Kit Number: 7209
Reviewed by  Jim Pearsall, IPMS# 2209

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MSRP: $13.75

The helicopter
The Mi-1 was the Soviet Union's first helicopter to go into large scale production. It entered service in 1950, and was first seen by Western observers at the Tushino Soviet Aviation Day in 1951. It's a 3-place utility helicopter using a Ivchenko IV-26 radial engine. The NATO reporting name is "Hare".

If you're interested in little known users for aircraft, the Mi-1 was used by Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Bulgaria, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Egypt, Finland, Hungary, Iraq, Mongolia, North Korea, Poland, Romania, USSR, and Syria.

Markings in the kit are for USSR, DOSAAF, Egypt, Poland, and Finland. I hadn't paid much attention to DOSAAF, but I find it's kind of like a cross between the Boy Scouts and ROTC, only they had real guns. And helicopters.

[review image] [review image] The kit
You get 2 sprues, one for the fuselage rear, interior landing gear and rotor assemblies, and the other is clear parts which are the forward fuselage.

Some of the parts had noticeable flash on them. The good news is that there is a very solid demarcation between where the part ends and the flash begins. So it was very easy to remove. I used my thumbnail to remove some of the flash.

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The pictorial step-by-step instructions lead you through assembly with little or no confusion. For this Gran should be applauded. Too many manufacturers assume you know what all the parts are and where they go. Yeah, right.

The interior is Spartan, as behooves a Soviet aircraft. The instrument panel is printed on the instructions, to be cut out and applied to the panel. I made a copy of the instrument panel, as the paper used for the instructions was a little "furry".

I had two problems with the assembly instructions. One of them was part p7. As the pictures show, there's supposed to be a shaft that goes through the hole in part p6. No shaft. I fell back on an old modeler's trick; I manufactured a shaft from a paper clip. So it became a "multimedia kit".

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When I assembled the rest of the rotor assembly, I found it necessary to design a tool to hold the rotor blades in place and balanced while the glue set. I find this minimalist solution to be one which allowed me to go on with other things instead of spending hours designing something really cosmic.

The other part I had a problem with was part p10. The instructions show a part on the outside of the tail rotor, probably a pitch control mechanism. OK. Except part p10 is also the right fuselage half, and there's no part that looks like the "spider" on the tree.

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Fit problems were minimal. There are no locating pins, notches or indicators, but everything went together well. I had to use the sanding stick on the fuselage and tail boom, but otherwise things were OK. The three-part front clear parts were a little tricky, but if you can find a thicker clear parts cement (watch crystal cement comes to mind), it would help a lot. I have a small bottle of Humbrol clear parts cement I picked up in Italy back in the 90s, and it's clear, sticky, and thick. Works fine.
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I had another adventure at about this time. The monsoon has arrived here in Arizona, and the relative humidity has gone from about 10% to nearly 50%. My moisture trap has not been needed for months, and suddenly it filled up. The moisture wasn't a problem, but the oil which the compressor had pumped into the line and which had been previously caught by the trap now mixed with my paint. I had to use enamel thinner and a cotton swab to remove the oily paint, which wouldn't dry, but would stick to my fingers and anything else I touched.
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The landing gear looks more difficult than it really was. Getting a single part and an L shaped one to match up with the fuselage and each other required the use of tube glue to get the working time I needed.

I also had a fit problem with getting the interior into the clear front. The floor is just a titch wider than the interior, and I split the bottom seam of the front while trying to install the floor.
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Decals
The decals were fine. They lifted off the paper after just one dip in water, and didn't crack, flake, dissolve or fold when I maneuvered them into position. Except for the fuselage number on the left side, which did have one corner crack and stay on the sheet.

Overall Assessment
Here's the finished model. It could be an SM-1, the Polish-built version of the Mi-1.

Thanks to John Noack and Gran Limited for the opportunity to build something that's certainly different.

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