1:72 J-22M Super Orao

An eagle from the joint Yugoslav-Romanian program

The attack aircraft J-22 Orao arose in the 1970s from cooperation between Yugoslavia and Romania, where it flew in parallel under the designation IAR-93. The prototype got into the air at the end of 1974, the power came from a pair of Rolls-Royce Viper jet engines built under license, and the machine was intended for attacking ground targets and for reconnaissance. Alongside the single-seat version a two-seat trainer was built as well. The Orao went through the wars of the 1990s and then received a modernization in the Serbian Air Force: new instrument equipment with screens, a new generation of sensors and external cameras. A machine converted in this way carries the designation J-22M.

What awaits in the kit

The package rests on injection-molded plastic parts, to which are added photo-etched sheet for the fine details, a set of painting masks for the transparencies and decals for two Serbian schemes. The instrument panel and the seat harness are among the places where the photo-etch shows the most.

The finished model measures around twenty-one centimeters in length and roughly thirteen in span, so it fits into an ordinary display case beside other machines in this scale. It can be built as a solo piece or as part of a display of later Serbian hardware. It pays to work the photo-etch before the fuselage halves are glued together - once the cockpit is closed you will no longer get inside. For collectors of European Cold War hardware this is a type that was long absent from what manufacturers offered. Balkan machines reach display cases rarely, and an attack aircraft built by two countries at once has few parallels.