of microrod to represent the
anti-collision beacon. This
was shaped and rounded of
when dry. The rudder includes
an integral trim tab, but I
added a further ixed tab to the
trailing edge. I also added all
the gear doors and antennae.UNDERCARRIAGE AND
UNDERWING STORES
I used Italeri’s undercarriage
mouldings, but it would have
been nice to have had separate
wheels. The units were painted
and itted early, after the main
paint job was over, to protect
the ventral ittings. They it
directly into Aeroclub’s wheel
wells without fuss, and the
hole under the nose requires
only thirty-seconds work to
accept the Italeri nosewheel
leg, although work is also
required to reduce the leg
suicient for a level set up.
Unfortunately, it appears that
Italeri have depicted the nose
gear in its unloaded state. When
itting the gear, it the main
gear irst, then the nosewheel
whilst adjusting its location
to get a proper set up before
applying glue/cement. Note
that the main gear secondary
doors hang from beneath the
wing, not attached to the legs
as suggested by Italeri. Italeri
ofer a range of wing stores,
including the two styles of tip
tanks previously mentioned,
underwing tanks, rocket pods
and 30mm cannon pods. I had
already chosen to model 61-32
from the Aeronautica Militare’s
213 Gruppo, directly from
Italeri’s decal sheet, but for the
underneath Italeri stipulate,
strangely, only the gun pods for
this machine. I went with the
low, made these up and painted
them of-black. Given the solidAeroclub wings, the location
pips on the gun packs were
not much help, so I was faced
with a hairy session involving
touch it, paint scrape and a
touch of tube cement to give
adjustment/alignment time.THE CANOPY
I dawdled for ages over which
canopy to use. Both were
excellent in appearance, but
neither itted the Aeroclub
fuselage perfectly, and it was
this that happily led me to
the decision to display the
canopy open. I decided upon
the Aeroclub canopy, but it
was oversize and had to be
signiicantly reduced. I then
detached the windscreen using
a razor saw and trimmed up
the cut ends. By this point
I had already realized the
value of the styrene used by
Aeroclub for their canopy;
it was much quicker than
acetate to saw, ile and sand,
and moreover was beautifully
clear and, if you like, so easy
to attach using liquid poly. The
seating for the windscreen
had to be iddled about a little
and I inished of with a thin
bead of stretched black sprue
(black to match the black of
the instrument panel shroud),
between the screen edge and
its seating, and some iller,
using Tamiya tape to protect
the ‘glass’. Neat enough but
not totally successful. Italeri’s
canopy furniture is excellent.
The parts amount to only the
actuator ram and a cross-
canopy brace, but they make
such a diference. Anchored
to the brace and of course
keeping the line of the central
canopy frame is a windscreen
divider for the rear cockpit,
however this is not providedby Italeri. I made mine from
thin transparent plasticard,
itted after painting of course,
but note that the windscreen
opens with the canopy. I had
used Johnson’s ‘Klear’ in the
past as a ixative, but not to
aix structural parts, but this
was the only way I could think
of to secure my windscreen
without risk of fogging the
canopy. The screen already had
a nice entrapment between
the brace and the inside of the
canopy, so all that was required
was a few light brushfuls of
Klear along the base of the
windscreen, at the juncture
with the brace. Wonderful!
What on earth would we do
without acrylic loor polish?FINISH
The single colour grey scheme
was surprisingly problematic.
The overall light grey was
introduced from about 1994,
too late to catch the Aeroclub
instruction sheet. Italeri’s sheet
claims light grey FS 36495 for
the colour. SAMI magazine for
July 2000 records that the 1/48
scale Frems kit stipulates Dark
Compass Ghost Grey FS36320,
but this is much darker. An
authoritative source records
that the MB.339A maintenance
manual gives FS 36280,
described as ‘Dark Gray’ on
the FS595 website. This piece
of evidence is as hard to ignore
as it is to understand, because
this colour also seems much too
dark. I think the truth may be
that there were two diferent
overall greys in use early on, or
at least for diferent aircraft,
but that the lighter colour
quickly became deinitive. The
airshow photos accompanying
this feature all display a
decidedly light grey, exceptthat is for one (taken in 1997)
which shows a close-up on a
wingtip tank, certainly painted
in a much darker grey. I decided
to go with the light grey. The
only masking required was the
windscreen, the undercarriage
leg locations, the landing
light, a roll of paper for the
exhaust can, and the canopy.
The vac-form canopy had
very little rigidity and I wasn’t
looking forward to masking it,
but it went well enough once
I had girded up my loins for a
methodical approach. Once the
canopy was masked, I installed
Italeri’s canopy cross-brace.
I began airbrushing with
an overall coat of Xtracolor
X136 Light Compass Grey,
but this proved to be too dark
and too blue and required a
repaint. First though I took the
opportunity to mist on some
black/brown pre-shading,
before trying again with a 50/50
mix of X136 and X137 Light
Gull Grey. This was better and
I was quite tempted to leave it
at that, but it still seemed too
dark, and what’s more there
still was a decidedly blue cast to
the colour. I now found myself
gravitating back where I started
with Italeri’s FS36495! Humbrol
147 was a straight match, and
so after a further pre-shade I
loaded 147 into the airbrush.
Perfect. Wish I’d trusted Italeri
in the irst place! The colour of
the Day-Glo areas around the
middle of the wingtip tanks
was also diicult, as is so often
the case with such things.
My irst attempt was based
around a mix of Humbrol Gloss
Orange and Humbrol Gloss
Blaze 193, a luorescent colour
now deleted from Humbrol’s
range. This looked ine until I
started to check my references
more carefully. It’s not oftenAPRIL 2019 • SCALE AVIATION MODELLER INTERNATIONAL1/72
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