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Fiat G.50

by Thomas Pedersen

Here are some pics of my newly finished Airfix FIAT G-50 in 1/72 scale.

This started out as a quick-build, to get something finished, but ended, not much, but a little more complicated.

Interior:

I realized that what was supplied by Airfix (just a seat) was not enough, as everything is very visible in the open cockpit. So I had to do a little scratcing to fill out the empty hole! I did a instrument panel, some structure on the fuselage sides, and side consoles. Not much but that helped a lot.

I was so satisfied that I was disappointed when I glued the two fuselage halves together and saw that most of it was almost invisible! I therefore cut open the door so you could see the interior. The door itself is made of thin sheet styrene with a handle of stretched sprue.

Exterior:

There was only a few panel lines (raised) on this little model so I decided to try and rescribe them as this seemed to be a manageable task for me. I used a sewing needle in a pinwise without any problems, as a guide I used dymo-tape.

The cowling is in one piece and was thick walled, I cut out the cowl flaps and made some of sheet plastic to get a more realistic thickness.

The windscreen in the kit is also very thick, so I made a new out of heat stretched clear plastic card, using the original as a mold.

The cowl guns were made from a set of etched gun jackets from Toms Modelworks, and I think the effect even in this small scale is good. I heated the etched mesh over a lighter untill it changed color and then rolled it over some thin pieces of copper wire.

I used True Details wheels. Normally I think their wheels are too flat, but those "blurps" of plastic Airfix submitted was simply too bad!

I started painting the model with a coat of Xtracolor RLM 79 for the base color. At this time I had just recieved my new airbrush a Badger 100 gravity feed, so I wanted to do some practicing.

As this was meant to bet a quick-build I did not want to do a lot of research on paint schemes, so I just went to HyperScale's Galleries and found Riccardo Trotta´s beautiful G-50. I simply copied his paint scheme of a aircraft from 352 Squadriglia in Northe Africa in 1941.

The brown and green was Humbrol 113 and 117 and for the lower surface I used Humbrol 166.

The yellow paint for the cowling was a mix of several colors.

The decals supplied from Airfix was almost what I needed to use, except that a black "1" was to be changed to a red "2". Also the marking under the cockpit needed to be replaced, but this was because the Airfix one was to simple. I found some replacements on a old ESCI sheet. The "2" was from the scrapbox.

After decaling, I dull coated using Testor's Dullcoat. After that I made a mix of dullcaot and VERY little white and misted it over the top surfaces to represent the fading caused by the sun.

Photos were taken with a Samsung Digimax 330 outdoor on a overcast day.
 

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

Images Copyright © 2004 by Thomas Pedersen
Page Created 12 September, 2004
Last Updated 01 December, 2004

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