Fiat CR.42 Group Build

[No.1]

Sorry my friend, I did not mean on archive images, I did mean on your model build.

[Profa]

Tonight I mostly played with PE parts and have corrected green shade of interior - it seemed too greenish, and needed some sort of grey hue...
Yesterday evening I have already corrected grey to more light shade - by mistake I have used Humbrol 140 instead of 141 .
Meanwhile black is painted on on left control panel, and tomorrow I'll weather and assembly the cockpit
Continue soon!

[Sall]

I like your work a looooot!!

[No.1]

As well I have seen both interior colors, your colors are good. Maybe green to be more medium but it is fine...

[draken35]

Excellent...

[Second Air Force]

Nice progress, Profa. I changed the color tone of my cockpit after the first painting also. The surviving J-11 cockpit is a darkish grey so I used USAAF neutral grey on mine.

A bit of progress was made this evening which shocked me. The Classic Airframes cockpit doesn't fit all that easily into the fuselage. If you get the instrument panel halves properly attached to the cage structure and install the compass and gunsight the fuselage halves can't be closed because the panels hit the sides. I simply used the Dremel to carefully trim some plastic from the fuselage parts until a proper fit was made. It turned out to be a rather quick fix and so more got done than I'd thought.

Fiat CR.42 Group Build

Fiat CR.42 Group Build

One small drawback with the CA kit is that the windscreen sides are wider than the fuselage opening. Other reviews I've read mention using a hair dryer to heat the perspex and then bending to narrow it. I didn't want to risk breaking the glass so I used a strip of styrene to widen the opening in the fuselage. I apologize for the photo quality but you can easily see the .030 strip in white. The windscreen fits perfectly now, and the gun cover that goes in front of this still fits very nicely.

Fiat CR.42 Group Build

After fixing that little problem the assembly continued. The fit of most everything else is pretty nice for a short-run style kit and little filler is needed so far.

Fiat CR.42 Group Build

And, to finish out the evening, what would be better than a Falco on skis? I had a spare set of skis from the Accurate Miniatures Il-2 so one of them has been cut up to make this master for resin casting. It was quite simple--just split the ski lengthwise and spanwise to remove material, then the sides were built up a bit to deepen the ski and everything was glued together. Then a bit of resin was poured into the aft segment to level it and the whole mess was sanded to the final shape.

Fiat CR.42 Group Build

[No.1]

Mate- you faced problem with accuracy and I wanted a time ago to make an article about this. In many cases small aircraft have internal elements and structure tight to the airframe and in elements like this are also instruments panel. So if manufacturer make precise instrument panel it will never fit as well plastic kit fuselage wall thickness don't allow this. Result- kit will be brutally attacked on various forum and sites... If manufacturer reduce size of internal elements to make them fit in cockpit, witch hunters who live on various forums and web sites will spot this and again brutal attack on manufacturers. But- aftermarket producers will get its chance and make precise interior elements... which will be hard to install inside due to the fuselage wall...

Modeling world is so interesting

[Second Air Force]

Great point, brother!

I was told by another modeler that he finally gave up on a CA CR.42 because the cockpit didn't "fit". Heck, it only took me five minutes or so to trim the inside of the fuselage walls and everything snuggles in there nicely. I must say that the Eduard PE that comes with the kit is extremely nice and looks just like the instrument panel in the 1/1 scale Swedish survivor. We should add this type of material to Sall's sticky thread about different techniques, I reckon.

[No.1]

Good solution mate. From my side I will simply slice off fuselage sides and replace them with plastic or thin metal sheet.

[draken35]

Scott, as always I'm admirative of your fine work!!!

[Profa]

Nice fit and good solution for the windscreen, Scott! Much better, if you ask me, that heat warping...
As per fit issue of CA interior, it was addressed in some build logs and reviews, and every time the solution was just as you did it - thinning of fuselage walls.
I don't think I'll have this problem as Italeri has already provided tubular structure as separate piece, which is just replaced with (thinner) PE part.
Dependng on series, internal structure would be earlier green or later gray - this directive was put into full effect in 1942, but for Fiat one should find a photo of particular machine (which is impossible) to use right color... Therefore both are possible. Duxford and Swedish samples have gray, while Italian is green

[Second Air Force]

Nice fit and good solution for the windscreen, Scott! Much better, if you ask me, that heat warping...

Dependng on series, internal structure would be earlier green or later gray - this directive was put into full effect in 1942, but for Fiat one should find a photo of particular machine (which is impossible) to use right color... Therefore both are possible. Duxford and Swedish samples have gray, while Italian is green

Yes, I was afraid of two possibilities if I tried to warp the transparency--1. I'd break it, 2. It would fly out of my fingers into the Carpet Monster and never be seen again!

When I started my cockpit I initially thought the green would have been used, but the real Swedish airplane shows it to be the dark grey. I'm going to try to find another kit (Italeri this time, I think) and build an early machine with green.

[No.1]

This green I have chance to see and it is medium color (at least used by Fiat) and it is some range of FS 24272

[Second Air Force]

One item I forgot to mention about the Classic Airframes kit--the oil cooler inlets and outlets in each wing root are missing. It's not a huge problem, though. I drilled the inlets out and simply made outlet fairings from .005 sheet styrene.

Fiat CR.42 Group Build

Fiat CR.42 Group Build

You can see in the underside shot that there isn't a lot of filler as I'd mentioned earlier. Just a tiny bit along the major seams and joints and a quick sanding took care of them.

Fiat CR.42 Group Build

[Sall]

Nice!