Skip to main content

Alenia C-27J Spartan - 98° Gruppo (Italeri 1/72) - Part 1

A new year, a new project.
But different this time. At least, that's the plan.
No thrills - no frills, just out of the box...

When I first started modelling (a long time ago) I mainly built 1/76 and 1/72 Matchbox kits as they were easy to come by.
There was also a good selection of Revell kits, but I didn't like them back then. Too much flash to clean up and soft detail. At least that's what I can remember now.

Planes soon became the main staple in modelling for me, before I discovered the 1/20 F1 cars from Tamiya...
Although my main interest lies still with car kits, the occasional plane will find its way into my stash.
And this happened too with this particular kit.

When I first saw this kit in the new kits section of an issue of Airfix Model World I was intrigued.
I never heard of this plane type before (not that I now all plane types by heart, mind you). When searching Google for this plane I discovered a great special livery for it. And that's when I decided that I was going to build this plane.

(image taken from scalemates.com)

As it turned out, this kit wasn't new. Italeri first released it in 2011.
This particular release (from 2017) has three possible liveries. To my joy the livery I was planning to build was included in this release.

picture by Sven Zimmermann, taken from Airfighters.com

The kit comes in a sturdy and quite large carton (for a 1/72 kit).
All the sprues are packed separately in a PE bag.
Surface detail is very fine and delicate. I hope not too delicate once there's paint on the model.
There's quite a lot of detail on some of the smaller parts. Really impressive.
Just a minimum of flash is visible on a few parts. Some sink marks are present too. Sadly on quite visible places, so that will take some work.

The decal sheet looks great (and is big), with vibrant colours and seems in register on first inspection. Printed by Cartograf I'd expect no less.
The instructions are very clear. You'll have to decide quite soon which version you want to build as there are different steps to follow depending on the version you're planning to build.

(picture by Alfredo La Marca, taken from airliners.net)

A neat touch is the way the fuselage of the plane is built up with an inner and outer fuselage.
The inner fuselage has the padding detail visible on the inside which can also be seen clearly on the image above.


Below are some pictures of the sprues and decal sheet to get a bit of an idea of the detail present.


Building has already commenced, so the next update won't be long.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Citroën Xsara WRC - Francois Duval, ADAC Rallye Deutschland 2007 (part 6)

Welcome to the next part of this build report. I left you last time (or should I say long, long ago...) with the images of the primed body, floor and roll cage, showing that there was some work to do to get everything ready for some color. In this update I will show you how far I got with these parts. I'll start with the body and floor. Sanding everything back turned out to be quite a bit of work. And of course there were several areas still in need of attention. Especially around the wheel arches there was a lot of additional work left. Luckily, with the car in tarmac setup, there's not much room left to see the remaining rough spots that have survived the clean up process... Which leads me to the conclusion that I could have cut some corners in this particular area by only cleaning up the most visible sections. It's a good lesson to check beforehand what is actually visible when the car is built together. I'll definitely be cutting some corners for the other two ...

Citroën Xsara WRC - Francois Duval, ADAC Rallye Deutschland 2007 (part 5)

As promised in the previous part in this update I'll show what I changed on the roll cage. The roll cage as included in the kit is far from complete. When looking at on-board footage and reference images found on the internet the roll cage needs some extra tubing added.  Over the years the roll cage of the Xsara WRC has had several variants as I've noticed studying my reference images. Which isn't that strange as the crash test and safety regulations have changed over the years.  The reference images I have of the specific chassis (#28) which Duval raced during the 2007 ADAC Rallye Deutschland are sadly inconclusive about which version of the roll cage was fitted. Which means that the adaptations I made are at best a good "guesstimate"... As long as it looks and feels right, it is right I guess... I used Evergreen styrene rod of 1.6 mm in diameter for the added sections for the rollcage.  The added sections are highlighted in the images below. Another section I...

Benetton Ford B190B, F1 season 1991 (part 5)

Well. I can hardly believe how long I've been silent here on this blog. Not counting the two show reports I posted earlier this week, the last posting here being from November 2021... But, since I went from a 5 to a 4 day work week at the beginning of this year, there is finally some more spare time to spend. Oh, and a good cleaning of the modelling "cave" did also help in motivating me to dive into the cellar and do some building again. To start a (fingers crossed) longer stint of modelling activities, I decided to (finally) continue with this particular kit. It's been lying around for almost 10 years, so you can say it's desperately in need of some attention. Luckily all parts are still accounted for as I had the parts nicely packed away (for a change). Upon inspecting my work I couldn't quite look past a few things that weren't so neatly done. Especially the engine/gearbox and rear wing assemblies were a bit wanting. Also, upon cross-checking ...