I feel like some Italian tonight...

[the Baron]

Well, I finally finished something else, a pair of Italian fighters in 1/72, the Italeri Reggiane Re2001, and Airfix' Fiat G50. I had intended these to be quick builds, but we all know how that usually turns out.

I picked up these kits for a song, the G50 at the MFCA show, for $5, and the Re 2001 at our club raffle clearance in June, for a buck. The Reggiane was bagged, with no instructions or decals. It's a pretty simple kit, so I started it right away, intending it to be an exercise in basic building and airbrushing skills. It went more or less according to plan.



This is the first model on which I used the airbrush for all color, except for the pilot and the landing gear struts. For decals, I picked up a sheet of Colorado Decals' Macchi Veltro markings on eBay. I didn't care that they were for a completely different aircraft, I just needed the national markings.



For the markings, I laid down the white for the fuselage band and the disks for the roundels, which I masked with circles cut with a drafting template.



Then I laid down the black for the wing walks, and masked them, followed by the underside, and then the upper surfaces. All colors were Tamiya acrylics.



I also did not do very much in the way of weathering, apart from some paint chipping (Tamiya Flat Aluminum) and some exhaust and blast staining (chalk pastels). As an exercise, it went relatively well, with just a little overspray on the right undercarriage "knuckle", and also, a minor mistake in the national markings. It wasn't till I got the decals on, that I picked up Squadron's "Reggiane Fighters In Action" on eBay, and discovered the mistake. Can you spot it?



In any case, I enjoyed building this relatively simple kit, and it started me on an Italian fighter kick. In rapid succession, I picked up 9 or 10 kits of various aircraft, all in 1/72, from Italeri, Revell and Airfix, to Tamiya and Hasegawa. I plan to experiment on painting those really cool Italian camoflage schemes.

Here's the underside of the Reggiane:

 

[the Baron]

When I started the Re 2001, I decided to build the G50 in parallel. This was also to be a quick build--after all, it's just an old Airfix kit, right? But there was a warning sign at the start--the kit, though sealed in its original bag and card, was missing the clear sprue. So, no windscreen. No matter, I told myself, I would use it as an opportunity to test making a canopy from scratch.



Construction was straightforward. I painted and assembled the engine and cowling separately and set it aside. I painted the pilot, which has particularly crisp detail, then assembled the fuselage and wings, trying to minimize seams. Then I tackled the camoflage.



I used Tamiya Dark Yellow for the base, not quite the same as the sand color, but I had it on hand and it looked close enough, to my eye (I can hear the Rivet Nazis gasping collectively). To reproduce the blotching, I used Tamiya Dark Green, sprayed over a template made by punching small holes in a 3x5 index card.



In a larger scale, this template method would probably work better. And in the meantime, I've discovered that Paasche makes smaller and finer nozzles for the VL airbrush, than I currently have. On a future build, I'm going to try a smaller nozzle and free-hand it.



In any case, you can see, I got a lot of overspray from the green, and the blotches don't quite match photos I've seen of the real thing. But I'm not unhappy with the results.

Decals are the kit decals, which are older than I am, I think. The white areas had yellowed, but responded well to the sunny window technique. I was pleasantly surprised that they did not fall apart on contact with water, and that they snuggled down relatively well. But they are rather translucent, too. Had I known, I'd have laid down white where the national insignia go, and would have painted the fuselage band.



Now, to the canopy. I experimented through a couple of passes. First, I made a male mold only, using Apoxie Sculpt, and heated a piece of acetate over a candle, and tried to shape it over the mold. But the plastic would either cool before I could shape it, or I heated it too much and it burned. So then I made a female mold, and tried a second pass. Here is the mold:



This pass worked better. I heated the plastic, placed it in the female half, and smashed the male half into the hole:



That gave me a shaped blank:



From the blank, I carefully cut a windscreen blank. I sanded and filed it to shape, and thought about whether to paint the framing, or use painted Tamiya tape cut in strips. The windscreen looked good, and I test-fitted it to the cockpit, and...

...it fell into the cockpit, never more to emerge. So now, I have a 1/72 rattle.

All was not lost. In the meantime, I bought another kit off eBay, and discovered that Airfix included a fret with four--read it, four--windscreens. They must have figured that it was such a tiny part, we modelers would lose three of 'em, before we could get one to stick. So, I was able to replace my scratch-built screen with a donor part. Still, it was a proof of concept.

This kit offered battle on some other fronts. It was also missing the nose guns, so I replaced them with brass tubing. There's a piece of tubing rattling around in the fuselage now, too. And the left gun got stuck at an angle when I installed it, so I had to dissolve the CA glue that I used, with acetone, and then file the hole and reinstall the gun, then touch up the damage.

Again, not a lot of weathering, just exhaust and blast staining using chalks.

But I'm psyched now to build more Italian fighters, and I have clearer and better ideas on reproducing the camo patterns. I'll be turning out more of these tiny planes in the future.

As always, comments/criticisms are welcome, and thanks for looking!

 

[Ferris928]

VERY cool subject Baron! Thanks for sharing it. looking forward to see more of these.
Cheers!

 

[JMac]

Nice fix on the wind screen Baron. I like the look of the G. 50 and the Re 2001. The whole Italian spot camouflage has been keeping me from building the G. 55 I have here in the stash, but your Re 2001 looks great.

 

[Holden]

Well done on both builds.

 

[the Baron]

Thanks, guys! I'm getting more comfortable using my airbrush, and on the next Italians I do, I think I can use a putty like Blu Tack to mask the mottling/blotching. They also used a pattern of sharp-edged patches of green on a sand background, and I think that PostIt Note paper would work very well to mask that.