Time for an inbetweenie! - Zio's Fiat CR.42 "Falco"

The External tank of my shuttle build is going steadily and well, but I was desperately in need of some direct result. And there's one designer who made just the right models for such a job: Fabrizio Prudenziati. His models are always such a joy to build. This time I chose his model of the late 1930's biplane Fiat CR.42 Falco. A little harder than most others, because it doesn't have an instruction sheet accompanying the model. But when you 've built more than a dozen of his models, you get the hang of it. This time no difference, with just a three-view of the plane at hand, it all worked out fine.
Here's a pic of the finished Fiat, the build pictures is after the jump.

Of course, with (almost) all of Zio's models, it is just one page. Which I think is one of the charming assets of his models.

Note: I went wrong here with the nose section!

There's a lot of curving involved, I use shortened knitting needles for that.I curve on the inside of my hand, (there's a tutorial on the tutorial-page of my blog about how I do it.)
Now the nose of this airplane is quite tightly shaped and it is almost logical to join both halves together. But you need to add the long strip between the two halves! I almost forgot but luckily, the glue wasn't dry yet.

Like this! I still don't know why that triangular part is there, I just folded it in and glued it to the inside. The two segments protruding at the front are for the cowling. It needed some extra curving.

So, with that out of the way I tackled the main wing. Usually, you have to curve it at the leading edge and glue it at the trailing side but this wing is the other way around and so you have to find a way to join the front in a good way. I used inner glue strips. (and I curved the leading egde first with a knitting needle.)

I always am amazed at Zio's tevhniques of colouring. The colours look so vivid and threedimensional yet there is a very nice grain to the colours which give the models a hand-made, hand-painted quality.
Time for the cowling. They are glued to the protruding strip. As usual, Zio is using double tabs for the glueing. So, tabs on both sides. You need to colour the edges a lot. I ususallu take a grey pencil, in different shades for light or dark. Grey tends to blend in quite well if you don't have the exact colour pencil.

And then I took a sewing pin, some beads and the propeller and made the engine and prop section.

Right. On with the wings. The lower wing is beautifully shaped, but you need to know how to curve it! The wing itself is easy, folding the right way, but the middel piece needs to be following the curvature of the plane's belly. The sides need to slightly curve the other way to connect to the wings again. I didn't take any good pictures of it during the build, but in the end you'll see what I mean.

This has a bit of a GeeBee racplane-feel to it. Stubby wings and just all engine.

The wheels were tricky, because they are in streamlined covers. Lot of curving and fiddling with small parts. I didn't make any pictures of the process. Sorry. But remember, this was just an inbetweenie and for some mindful mind-clearing activities...

I chose to make the wing struts out of doubled 270 gram card. They're one piece for each 'row' of struts, with small cuts where they have to bend. I used the Zio struts as a template, This is ideal for doing struts. After it was dry, I attached the main wing to the struts. A little drop of glue on the 'elbows' and well, there it was. The tail wheel, the tail and the stabilos were done while the wing was drying and so we have arrived at the last set of pictures of the finished plane. First the belly.

 You can see how the middle part of the wing is curved. It also has two inlets for the radiator (I presume).

And there it is. A nice little dark Italian fighter plane from the early days of WW2.
Up next we're back to the shuttle's External Tank again. But that's for a later date.
Thanks for passing by and having a read here.
--PK