Scale 1/72
Manufacturer Aeroplast
Kit ID 90043
Type PZL C-145A Combat Coyote 12-0338
Unit 318th SOS
Date 2014
Aftermarket parts used None
Other detail added None
Model built by Chris St Clair
Date Completed June 2016

A little history to start...

The C-145A Skytruck is a variant of the PZL M28 Skytruck light twin-engine aircraft manufactured by Polskie Zaklady Lotnicze (PZL) Mielec, a Sikorsky company, based in Poland. The PZL M28 Skytruck is a licence-built version of the Antonov An-28 and is in service with the Polish Air Force, Vietnamese Air Force, Polish Navy, Royal Nepalese Army Air Service, Venezuelan Army and Indonesia Air Police.

The C-145A Skytruck was initially procured to support the non-standard aviation mission in 2009. It was deployed by the AFSOC's 318th Special Operations Squadron under the 1st Special Operations Wing at Cannon Air Force Base to support AvFID missions in March 2011. It was relocated to the 919th Special Operations Wing at Duke Field in January 2013 and is being operated by the 6th Special Operations Squadron. It replaced MC-130E Combat Talon I aircraft, which was retired in April 2013.

During 2015, the US Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) decided to retire two-thirds of fleet, just two years after it moved to its current home at Duke Field, Florida.

The AeroPLAST kit is a typical Eastern European kit, having nice detail, but compromised by a (very) multi-part assembly. The plastic is very soft and required a lot of effort to ensure clean join of the parts.

A major problem was the alignment of the fuselage, tailplanes, vertical tails and wings and the model is not perfect by any means - not helped by it being dropped on the floor during painting, resulting in the entire fuselage cracking in two from the wing joint backwards!

The decals are probably the highlight of the kit - they have good coverage and are bright - even the white of the "house" scheme covers well. The section around the rear fuselage was not perfect, this being more to do with the dark blue being masked and painted slightly out of alignment, but luckily some spare markings were cannibalised from a second kit (thanks to Haydn Hughes!)

All of the landing lights etc are provided as separate pieces - these did not fit well, mainly due to the soft plastic, and were faired into place using either Krystal Kleer or Formula 560.

Overall, this proved to be quite a challenging build, and it will be interesting to see how the Amodel and (recently announced) Special Hobby kits compare!

Review and images by Chris St Clair