1:72 R-60 - AA-8 Aphid (4 pcs)

Four small R-60 in 1:72

The set completes one of the smallest air-to-air guided missiles ever created. In 1:72 these really are miniature stores, but ones that on a model give away at once what machine and what period it is.

The lightest weapon of its kind

The designers laid it out so that it would weigh a fraction of what the usual missiles for close combat do. Low weight opened the door to use on machines that would carry a larger weapon with difficulty: besides fighters, it was carried on the pylons of ground-attack aircraft and attack helicopters as well. It entered service in the nineteen-seventies and spread practically across the whole Eastern bloc and among export customers too. Its recognition marks are the small destabilizing surfaces ahead of the main control surfaces and an unusually short body, on account of which the missile is easy to overlook in photographs.

Handling the smallest parts

In the end you are working with objects the size of a match. Get tweezers with a fine tip ready and work over a surface with a raised edge, because a part that has sprung away once you will as a rule not find again. They should be separated only just before use. Apply the paint heavily thinned, so that it does not flood the fine relief, and seat the four of them so that all the pieces make the same angle with the pylon.

Who the set is prepared for

• builders of fighters and ground-attack aircraft of Eastern manufacture
• modelers of attack helicopters with stores for self-defense
• collectors of aviation armament of the nineteen-seventies and eighties
• those who want precise small details on small models

The set serves as an accessory to a finished box with a kit; you will not find consumables in it.