The Little World

Normally a set of red flags for me. In this case a boon.

This is a gift from my club – an abandoned kit that sat on the shelf in the storage room for all the years I’ve been a member. It is box scale – 1:50th. It is early Czech production, and is presented as ostensibly a Soviet aircraft.

In reality the Ansaldo was Italian, and a late WW1 development. Apparently quite a high-performance ship, it featured in Italian, American, and Spanish colours just after the war. Thank Google for the images of it outside of the Soviet Union.

A reasonable moulding, with few ejector pin marks and little sinkage. The wings are surprising – at first you think they are a mistake. The underside curves almost follow the contour of the upper surface. This is to represent the extremely thin cross-section Ansaldo designed. The ribs are prominent but with the Spanish colouring they will not be seen too much.

The inter-plane struts are also inter-linked – two sets of what look like bridge supports either side. I will have to clean them up and smooth the length as the early Czech moulding is not that precise.

It’s quite the novelty for me to be working in this scale – most of my modelling is done in far smaller sizes. But at least this will go nicely with the 1:48th Polikarpov I-16 in Spanish Republican colours that I also built.

Note that the instructions are entirely in the Czech language and the decal sheet is ” a product of the times “. Which have changed for the better…