1/48 Olympislavia PF-84-7 JetBolt

Gallery Article by Alvis 3.1 on Jan 10 2010

Silly Week 2010

 

Olympislavia! That glorious, short lived former Soviet Republic-ette that was the hated enemy of Aztekistan. It is unique in the annals of breakaway republics in that it is the only one that embraced the Olympics so strongly that it bankrupted itself within 3 years.

First, it tried to use the Olympic Rings as it's symbol, but was sued by the IOC to desist. The government then proceeded to fund a team for every Olympic sport, instead of normal infrastructures. So, instead of a fire brigade, they had a weightlifting team. Instead of a Coast guard, they had a rowing team. Hospitals? Bah! Sprinters! Road repairs! Phooey! More weightlifters! (Olympislavia is also has the highest per capita consumption of anabolic steroids)

Click on images below to see larger images

  

  

So, in the end, the economy collapsed and Olympislavia was reabsorbed into Russia, but not before it fought a brief and completely inconclusive skirmish with Aztekistan. The sole combat aircraft fielded by Olympislavia was the PF-84-7 BoltJet, a collection of parts and components of various older (re:ancient) aircraft sold to them by unscrupulous arms dealers. Mating the fuselage of very tired ex-Luftwaffe F-84s with the wings of P-47s, the JetBolts had engines from a variety of sources, most positively anemic. Takeoff runs were in the high 8,000 foot range, even with a lightly loaded aircraft. The thicker P-47 wing stripped the plane of acceleration and top speed, but did allow for copious internal fuel storage, which was fortunate, as most of the missions were spent clawing for altitude at full throttle, burning fuel at an amazing rate!  Oddly, there was no money for maintainence, and the planes rapidly fell into disrepair.

This one of of the planes from the "Pegasus" Squadron. Olympislavia used a lot of ancient Greek symbology in their flags and crests. The roundels are all the colours of the Olympic rings, arranged in a non-concentric manner to skirt copyright issues..

Kits that died to make this plane: Monogram/Revell F-84 and Academy P-47. The camo was inspired by the "Chocolate Chip" uniform scheme of the US Military. The main colours were airbrushed on, with the "chips" being hand painted. Decals were made on a rickety old Lexmark colour printer with Testors Decal paper.

Alvis 3.1

Photos and text © by Alvis 3.1