The Little World

The Fiat CR.32 is now ready to fight off the hordes of invading Japanese bombers from the Xú Jichâng airfield.

The period of time between the last post and this one was spent painting the wheel sub-assemblies – an easy task – and putting them on the fuselage. This was also an easy task, giving some satisfaction in that the geometry was right from the start. That was 6 parts accounted for…

Then the inter-plane struts. Fuselage with sesqui-wing, main wing, and 12 separate spars. The parts call-out for the Czech kit was off by one number, and it made for an anxious spatial recognition exercise to make sure that the right stick was destined for the right depression in the wing. It was a case of interpolation.

The best bet for most of these multi-wing jobs is to set the cabanes on the fuselage, align the wings so that they are the data lines, and then make the inter-planes match them. In this case the cabane N’s were also supplemented by two additional supports that had good slots in the wing – so I elected to set all struts on the upper wing and then offer it to the plane.

It was the work of several hours, as I let one set of V’s take hold before I assembled the next set. The cement of choice was a combo of thin and thick Mr Cement – the thin let the thick flow deeper into the joint.

It was anxious as the whole forest of sticks were lowered to the fuselage, but fortunately the Czech geometry was as good for the wing as it had been for the landing gear and there was very little fettling needed. The sense of relief when the thing was seen to be square and plumb was palpable.

Then easy decals for wing and tail and hard ones for the fuselage – that exhaust pipe had to be worked around. I am now using rattle can semi gloss and matte for the final finish as I found the bottled varnish tended to clog in the airbrush needle. The tiny windscreen was printed on an acetate sheet, and these scare some people. I spent a career cutting out plastic tooth crown forms with scissors, so they hold no terrors.

Who knew at the start of my retired modelling career that I’d get as much fun out of 1:72 scale kits? I’ve been scorned for not building bigger, but I am nevertheless delighted.