Macchi C.200 Saetta by ccoyle - FINISHED - Modelarstwo Kartonowe - 1/33 - CARD

[ccoyle]

Okay, I finally decided what to work on next, and @Egilman is ever so slightly responsible for helping with the final decision. He suggested I build a Lightning next -- except he didn't specify which Lightning to build! 😉  Saetta is, of course, Italian for 'lightning'. The Macchi C.200 was the second of Italy's monoplane fighters to take to the air, following the Fiat G.50 Freccia (which I also have in my stash). Both aircraft first flew in 1937. The Saetta ended up flying more sorties than any other WW2 Italian fighter.

 

Once upon a time, I wasn't all that enamored with Italian aircraft, but as I learned more about the exploits of the Regia Aeronautica, its aircraft kind of grew on me, even its decidedly hunchbacked first-generation monoplanes. The hump was a deliberate design feature, intended to improve the pilot's field of view. In addition to looking a little homely, the Saetta reportedly also had exceptional maneuverability. Sadly (or fortunately, depending on which side you were rooting for), like Italy's other first-gen monoplanes, the Saetta was also under-powered and under-armed. While roughly equal in speed to the Hawker Hurricane, it was considerably slower than the other Allied fighters it would engage in the Mediterranean theater, such as the Spitfire and Kittyhawk.

 

The publisher of this kit, Modelarstwo Kartonowe, is new to me, but not the designer -- Marek Pacynski. Marek has had his models issued by many different publishers. I have previously completed one of his models, a PZL-50, but I have also had two of them wind up in the bin. Some folks have told me that his newer designs are much better than his older ones (makes sense), so hopefully this 2019 issue will go together well. I really like the colors -- Italian desert camo schemes were always visually interesting. The graphics on this kit are done by proArte.

 

 

 

Not a lot of diagrams compared to some kits, but hopefully enough to get the job done.

 

 

An interesting feature in this kit is that there are three options for building the engine: an option for a single piece with the engine elements printed on it, an option that includes only one bank of 3D cylinders, and an option for a complete engine. I'm thinking seriously about the second option, since so little of the rear bank of cylinders is actually visible on twin-row radials.

 

 

A couple of great three-views -- you can see that apart from the fuselage hump the Saetta actually had quite pleasing lines.

 

 

And of course the laser-cut frames set, which includes laser-cut cooling jackets for the machine guns. In this instance, the frames were included with the kit, as is loudly proclaimed by the red banner on the kit cover.

 

 

There is no canopy available for this kit. Like most Italian fighters in the Med, this one had its hinged canopy removed and retained only the windscreen, which had only four plexiglass elements, which shouldn't be too hard to make.

 

Look for first cuts soon!

[Egilman]

So, the lightning strikes! Works for me....

[realworkingsailor]

Another radial engined bird?  You are a glutton for punishment (even if you only make the single bank version) 😜

 

Can’t wait to see how you master this one! 😁

 

Andy

 

 

[ccoyle]

1 hour ago, realworkingsailor said:

Another radial engined bird?  You are a glutton for punishment (even if you only make the single bank version) 😜

 

 

The designers of WW2 military aircraft seem to have had an unhealthy fixation on radial engines. I don't think they gave much thought to the anguish they would be causing for card modelers years down the road. 🤔

[Egilman]

4 hours ago, ccoyle said:

The designers of WW2 military aircraft seem to have had an unhealthy fixation on radial engines.

Actually, they had a very healthy fixation on Power to Weight ratio, which up until 1940, heavily favored radial engines...

[Danstream]

As usual, I will follow this one. Curious to see how the 'hump' will turn out with paper.

Dan

PS: the C.200 never had an hinged canopy, early production had a sliding hood, but that was soon eliminated apparently because of the pilots fearing for not being able to bail out.

[Canute]

Chris, I'm in, too.

 

The radial was favored because if it took hits, they lost cylinders, but could still keep running and flying. Look at the Grummans, Corsairs and Zeros in the Pacific. In line engines are liquid cooled, so a hit meant lost coolant and dead engine.

[ccoyle]

Yes, aviation fans, I know why radial engines were used in WW2 combat planes. Sarcasm doesn't always come across clearly in written posts. 😉

 

Dan, I knew that about the canopy, too -- don't know how I got locked on to hinged instead of sliding. Must've been a brain fart. 😅

[Dave_E]

I am definitely in! 🍿🥤

[GrandpaPhil]

Looking forward to this build!

[Landlubber Mike]

Looking forward to this one Chris.  Love the look of the Italian planes!

[ccoyle]

This is basically just a photo to prove that I am working on this model -- I didn't just start a log and then not start building! I actually have a little more done that what is shown here, but I don't yet have additional photos.

 

 

One nice thing and one hiccup so far: The hiccup is that the two pieces that form the column for the rudder pedals were too large. The cylinders they formed were substantially larger than the locator marks for them. Some doctoring was required -- a bit of an auspicious start, considering that was only the second assembly of the project! The nice bit is that I found a bottle of paint at Hobby Lobby that was a near-perfect match for the printed interior green of the kit, which spared me some mixing-and-matching for the proper edge color.

[ccoyle]

More cockpit progress.

 

[Danstream]

Great!

You might consider the strange arrangement of seat harness of Italian planes that were a mix of belts and metallic chains.

Dan

[ccoyle]

2 hours ago, Danstream said:

You might consider the strange arrangement of seat harness of Italian planes that were a mix of belts and metallic chains.

 

My CR.42 has those chains. For the most part, I tend to avoid super-detailing cockpits -- it's a lot of work that will rarely be seen. As an aside, if you look at the seat, you'll see that it has one straight edge and one scalloped edge. The diagrams didn't indicate which edge was the top (and online photos usually show a rounded top, probably armor). After thinking about it for awhile, I chose to put the scalloped edge at the bottom, thinking that such an arrangement would allow the pilot to pull further back on the stick. Is it correct? I dunno, but other than the viewers of this thread, no one is likely to ever notice! 😋

[ccoyle]

Work on the cockpit continues. Next up was the oxygen bottle with its dreaded petal structures at either end . . .

 

 

. . . followed by the instrument panel, for which there were two options -- a simplified version (bottom) and one that allows the builder to create recessed instruments. I chose the latter -- I would not recommend this option for anyone who doesn't have a screw punch. The instruments are 'glazed' with cellophane tape. The panels were brushed on their back sides with very dilute canopy glue and then allowed to get tack-dry before adding them.

 

 

And this is the result:

 

 

Then it was time to put all of the interior cockpit bits together -- most of them, anyway. A few will wait until the interior skin is added.

 

 

 

 

That's it for now!

[Canute]

Good looking instrument panel, Chris. As to the front of the seat, I'll buy your logic.The F-4 had an indent on the front of the seat kit, which was what we sat on. In front of that was the lower ejection handle. The top of the stick was higher, like yours is, so there wasn't any interference. The lower handle was the one of choice, but for takeoffs, the upper was easier to yank on, since the stick was in the way for the lower. Confused yet? We got a lot of practice in the sims and with the ejection seat trainer.😄

[ccoyle]

Okay, folks, here's an unpleasant lesson in card model designing. This particular design element is something I did not know about this kit in advance of its purchase.

 

The outlined portion of this photo indicates the location of a wing fillet. I have done enough wing fillets now that they no longer intimidate me like they did back in the beginning. But this kit does fillets in a completely different fashion. In most kits, the fuselage is a roughly cylindrical structure coupled to a more or less straight wing, as indicated by the dashed lines in the photo. The fillet (solid line) is then added as a separate piece. But not this time.

 

This brings us to the external cockpit skin (the inner skin posed its own set of difficulties -- I cut it into left and right halves to facilitate assembly, and the left half took three tries to get it on right). Here you can see that the fillet, instead of being a separate piece, is an integral part of the skin. This made shaping the skin quite a challenge, because first we have the inward curve of the fuselage, then the outward curve of the fillet. And to complicate things even further, the radius of each curve changes from fore to aft. 🙄  After much fiddling around and test fitting, I decided that trying to glue this skin on in one step was going to be a nightmare, so I started by tacking the left and right edges to their respective wing frames, which ensured the alignment of the piece (hopefully). At this stage, you can see that there was still plenty of slack to be taken up at both the back . . .

 

. . . and front of the skin.

 

I then glued the front of the skin down, making sure the front and rear tick marks were lined up and pinching the skin down over its frames to eliminate the slack.

 

I did not glue the rear down yet, as I want to see how the next skin aft fits before securing it. The kit numbering suggests that the next skin forward is the next step of the construction sequence. The dashed line indicates the fillet that would be a separate piece in 99% of the card modeling world. The shaping of this part adds another challenge as the shape of the fuselage changes from cylindrical aft to a more squarish cross-section forward.

 

That's it for now!

 

 

 

 

[Danstream]

My ... this is difficult. What would intimidate me most is the fact that the assembly and gluing doesn't allow for mistakes. The first time you commit to glue needs to be the good one with the final finish.

Clearly, you are mastering these models by now, still I wish you best luck.

Kind regards,

Dan

[realworkingsailor]

Seems like every card model presents different challenges!  Would it be an idea to fill in the frame/wing filet area with some balsa and sanding to shape before wrestling with the outer skins? 
 

Andy

[ccoyle]

50 minutes ago, realworkingsailor said:

Would it be an idea to fill in the frame/wing filet area with some balsa and sanding to shape before wrestling with the outer skins? 

 

Hmmm. 🤔  Might not be a bad idea. Of course, I don't have any balsa here, and the horse has already left the barn, but it might be something to keep in mind if I ever run into this again.

[ccoyle]

I have formed and glued together the front two fuselage skins. After dampening the forward opening, I temporarily inserted bulkhead A to help the skin dry into the proper shape.

 

[ccoyle]

Since completing the forward fuselage looks a little intimidating, I decided to work on the rest of the fuselage first.

 

[ccoyle]

Well, as hinted at in an earlier post, the skinning of the forward fuselage poses quite the challenge. First we have the bottom skin added to the cockpit/fuselage frames:

 

 

Then the forward skins added -- the front part is not glued down yet in this photo. As you can see, this structure is going to have a few gaps to repair. It also has, despite my best efforts, a little bit of 'starving cow' action going on, but the camouflage scheme hides it pretty good.

 

 

To repeat what I said earlier, this is a very unusual fuselage + fillet design. I can't say I'm too fond of it. Having said that, this same model will probably turn up on one of the Polish forums looking like an absolute work of art and free of any errors! 😂

[ccoyle]

Well, I'm just having fit issues all over this model. As usual, I never quite know for certain whether these are due to my efforts or to inherent design issues (but I will observe that so far I have only successfully completed one out of three attempts at models designed by Mr. Paczynski).

 

As you can see in this photo, the upper and lower parts of the fillets, which are NOT separate pieces in this kit, are not going to come together neatly at the aft end of each wing. Some substantial surgery will be needed. I think this model is going to be more of an "artistic representation" than normal.

 

[Old Collingwood]

Thats  a puzzling  conundrum,  its  a shame when  kit manufacturers  dont do there  work corectly.

 

OC.

[ccoyle]

Surgery

 

Here's the start of the left wing root repair.

 

And the finished repair -- maybe.

 

On to the right side.

 

And the finished right side. Since this gap went right through one of the green splotches, I had to fix that as well. I rather liked the effect -- it camouflages the repair -- a little.

 

So I decided to add some splotchiness to the left side. As usual, this looks better in real life and when one isn't deliberately looking for it.

 

I can move forward now!

[realworkingsailor]

Glad to see you’ve found a solution! It matches nicely! Hopefully things get smoother from here 🤞

 

Andy

[Old Collingwood]

Thats an excellent repair.

 

OC.

[Egilman]

Never tell the difference....

 

Nice repair..