Italeri Savoia-Marchetti SM-82

For some reason 2014 seems to be developing into the year of Italian aircraft.  Today's completed model falls right into that category, being the Italeri Savoia-Marchetti SM-82 from a few years back. This is one in the long series of trimotors from this manufacturer; something of an Italian style point. And Italeri has followed suit, having produced the SM-79 and SM-81 as well.

I thought that the construction phase went very well, with good fit and decent detail inside and out. There were some anxious moments getting the landing gear to fit correctly, the tailwheel broke off more than once during the process, and I had some self-inflicted wounds that were incurred while painting the exhaust rings.

In fact, painting was a bit of an adventure. I was using White Ensign paints for the first time, and the experiment was generally successful. These are satin paints, a tiny bit more difficult to use than the fully gloss Xtracolours that I am more used to. I initially chose an incorrect green for the upper surfaces, which is in no way the paint's fault! But the original choice was not olive enough, and I didn't have WEM's Italian olive paint in my lineup (I had tried to buy it but at the time it was out of stock). I ended up using an Xtracolour rendition of the British olive drab, and I think it looks pretty decent. Markings were from the spares box - Tauro roundels and Xtradecal code numbers. The paint scheme itself came from a painted profile that I found on the internet at some point in the murky past, so I'm not sure who to credit for that.

Once again gratitude goes to Italeri, who have produced a good kit of an indigenous aircraft, which had formerly been available only in vacuform. Success with the SM-82 has led to some work being done on the Italeri Br-20 and Ca-311. I may have to tackle the yellow/green/red Italian camo before I'm done.

I'm in the middle of yet another display space shortage, so it appears that I will have to change the layout in my freestanding cases to accommodate more shelving. But that is a story for another day.

This is completed model #438 (#3 for the year), finished in February of 2014.