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Well, now that Ernie's build is nearing the end, now comes my time to "keep the flame burning" I have always liked the puny little Polish fighter, the brainchild of the gifted Zygmund Pulawski, one of the great aero-engineers of the between-the-wars era. When Silver Wings released their resin kit of it, I of course got it, but, like so many other boxes, it stayed nested in the stash ... Then came the annoucement that IBG was going to release a 1/32 kit injection-molded kit of the P-11c ! And of course, I had to get it, the compulsion growing as I saw the first pics and the fist test-shot build. Fantastic ! When it became available, I decided to go for the Premium edition box. In it, on top of the standard kit, you get a nice resin pilot by Bitzkrieg, the Master brass gun barrels and venturi, and an extra decal sheet to reproduce a (slightly) more colourful aircraft, with a top-wing white "lightning". With hindsight, the extra cost is probably not that justified, as you can get the extra parts separately. It is up to you to decide if you want the extra cost for the unique decal sheet ... In my case, it may prove not such a wise investment, as I am after producing something different with this kit. I make no secret that I largely prefer non-camoed aircrafts, preferably civilians, but colourful yellow- or silver-winged aircrafts can be a good second choice, in my preferred Golden Age era. The P-11c was not camoed : it was for most of its career covered in even more boring khaki, a blander version - if that is possible - of British WWI PC-10 . Not for me ! When I bought the SW resin kit, it was because I thought I could model it as HA-NBN, a PZL that was flown to Hungary at the beginning of the war, and interned there, and subsequently used for training and tug-gliding in a colourful crimson and yellow trim. So my initial plan for the IBG kit was all traced : I would finish it as the Hungerian PZL. Only then did I discover that the original aircraft was not a P11c, but rather a P11a. They look the same, but are in fact very different, the P11c being an almost all-new airframe (a bit like the F-18E vs the F-18C). Compared to the P11a, the "c" had a thinner wing, a lower (by 10 cms) engine thrust line, a longer fuselage by 30 cms, with the difference split both ahead and aft of the wing, with the cockpit further aft, and finally a different fin and rudder. Backdating the kit to an "a" version, without losing the fine surface detail, or reproducing the fin and rudder with the same surface detail as the kit's one was not undoable, but still too much of a challenge for my liking ! So exit HA-NBN ! But that is not enough to let me go for a khaki bird ! I finally found that the P11c prototype, dubbed P11/IV, sported an interesting livery when exposed at the 1934 Paris Air Show : white with a red trim. It was presented with wheel spats, which made it look even more "racy". Apart from that, it was very much like the production versions, with wing and fuselage guns, the same cockpit, etc.... Hereafter are two pics of the time, plus a color profile I found in my old "Plany Modelarskie #91" of the late 70s. The color profile is wrong, in that it shows a silver aircraft with red trim, when all other information point to the fact hat the P11/IV sported the Polish national colors, i.e. red and white. So now, I could get to work ! Next post will show the work on the big difference : the spats ! Hubert