Italeri Soviet Air Force La-5N

Just before Christmas 2013 I finished this Italeri Lavochkin La-5N Soviet WWII fighter. I originally built one of these over a weekend at my friend Phil's house sometime in early 1977. It was not long after I finished it I got my first airbrush on my 13th birthday. I always thought this was kind of an ugly airplane, and I really don't remember why I bought it the first time other than it was probably cheap at Peterson's hobby shop, or that it was Russian and cool. At any rate, I had fun building it again, because it is an excellent little kit - very detailed and crisply molded. By 1975 when this model came out, Italeri was producing excellent quality model kits in 1/72 scale. To this day, the La-5 remains the only Italeri model kit I've ever built. I do plan on building more however such as their outstanding C-119 Flying Boxcar and YF-12A to name a couple.
The rebuild seen here was painted with Testors Model Master Russian Underside Blue (hand-painted) and Testors Dark Green on top from a spray can. The metal panels around the exhaust is metal foil applied with Micro adhesive. I didn't bother to detail the interior since it can't really be seen through the tiny canopy piece.