
Manufacturer: Pacific Coast Models
Scale: 1/32
Kit Type: Injection Mold, Resin, Vac Canopies, PE
After Market : Scratchbuilt and Spares Box
Subject :Plane of Guiseppe Re
~Sold to Collector
As a South African, I have always had a great interest in the air battles of Northern Africa during WW2. The proliferation of schemes and odd tropicalized subtypes alone make for fascinating history. Add to that the unforgiving terrain, the open desert in some places touching the bluest ocean imaginable, under a sky as clear as crystal, and you have a setting for war that seems more comfortable in a science fiction or fantasy book, rather than in cold hard reality.

Italian aircraft have for long, in my favorite 1:32 scale, been mostly the stuff of dreams, the domain of a few insane scratch-builders and vac junkies. This was a real pity, since there was oodles of fun to be had with these beautiful, and sometimes odd designs, not to mention the schemes. I think the Italians were the only WW2 nation to give the German mottlers a serious run for their money in the area of sheer artistry.
So when Pacific Coast released the first 1:32 Plastic/PE/Resin/Vac kit of an Italian plane, the MC 200 Saetta, I felt compelled to leave my safe injection molding world and venture out into the desert of multimedia.

This kit, as I have now found with many such smaller industry kits, is not a perfect fit. But, Pacific Coast seem to have avoided most of the other pitfalls stepped in by other such manufacturers on their first attempts, like over-heavy panel lines and over riveting. This kit is a goody, and if you take your time with this one, she’ll go together like a dream, but don’t take any fit for granted. Test fit everything 5 steps ahead until it all works! Some of the plastic parts will require a bit of sanding and thinning to work, but generally the fit of this kit is not bad. Some parts worse and others better. The resin power egg fits especially well. It fits so well you can literally snap it together without glue!

Areas to watch out for though are the wheels, which will require some thinning, the gear bays, which will need a bit of sanding, and the cockpit sidewalls, which you will need to thin to allow easier fitting of the PE instrument panel later on. Apart from that, Bob’s your uncle!

I replaced the wheels with wheels from an abandoned 1/72 B-29 kit. Sacrilege I know, but they fit, and the Italian boffin at the hobby shop did not even notice…The riveting I did less than 10 minutes and a half litre of sherry after getting Rosie the Riveter. They are completely fictitious, and in fact, border on the highly creative with a smidgen of self–reinforcing delusion thrown in. Not so some of the areas where I sanded away and rescribed panel lines in an attempt to hide areas where I super-glued myself to the fuselage. Those are just sad.
