Originally built for SAMI and both appeared in the July 2005 issue. The text relates to the Serie II (the black & white one) but applies to the Serie I as well. The Serie 1, with its elliptical wing, is the prettier of the two.

Dujin Breda Ba.33 Serie 2 (Gypsy engine)

The Kit.

As ever, Dujin's resin kit is supplied in a clear bag, together with a folded single A4 'instruction' sheet. As with the other Ba.33 Serie 1 kit, the main resin parts are quite cleanly moulded with very restrained engraved panel lines and extremely delicate trailing edges to the rectangular wings (Serie 1 had a more graceful elliptical shape). Unfortunately, the model shares the same sheet of smaller detail parts. Therefore the propellor and exhaust are unusable and the large undercarriage fairings will require repair work. The canopy is moulded as a pair. This time no decals are provided.

Instructions.

The instruction sheet has a small amount of French historical text and a list of references, as well a rather crudely prepared set of plans to indicate the markings of one aircraft. The kits relatively simple construction does not require an assembly guide.

Assembly.

Before assembly, some time was spent removing flash and pour stubs from the major parts. There was also the cleaning up of the usable smaller pieces that had been removed from the sheet. As the undercarriage units were badly misaligned (about 0.5 mm!), I had to remove the wheels in order to tidy up each end and used spare wheels as replacements. The fuselage halves were lined up and glued together, after which the one piece wing and horizontal tail surfaces were attached, quickly followed by the rudder. The gap between the wing and fuselage was filled with Milliput. The interior is very basic. There is floor on to which two seats, and what appears to be a fuel tank, had been moulded. It was dropped into place followed by the only other cockpit items, which were two instrument panels. Any other detail will have to be scratch built. Now that the basic airframe was complete, the undercarriage units were then glued in place, followed by the one piece canopy, which had already been dipped in Future and carefully trimmed to fit. Tape was used to mask the canopy. I cleaned the surface of the model to remove any trace of mold release and then sprayed the model with primer.

Accuracy.

The model has a span of 132mm, a length of 97 mm and a height of 28mm.  From what little reference material I could find, it turns out that the actual aircraft had a span of 9.4m, a length of 6.78m and a height of 2m. The model is a bit over scale on its span and length, but the height is fine. It certainly captures the look of this aircraft, although I admit I prefer the more graceful wings of the earlier Serie 1 aircraft.

Colour Options.

There is just the one scheme to work on. It is an all black aircraft with its G-ABXK black codes outlined in white, together with black and white striped tail surfaces and white canopy frames. There is also a white cheat line running back from the base of the canopy frame towards the tail fin. Clearly, with no decals supplied, a very complex masking operation was called for. White was sprayed first over the whole airframe and allowed to dry thoroughly. I was not too concerned about getting a pure white finish as the contrasting black paint should provide a lift to its tonal value. First off I masked the tail surfaces and the fuselage cheat line. I did not bother to msk the code letters as it was beyond my capability!a

Decals.

none supplied.

Conclusions/Recommendations.

Hard to recommend this kit

Many thanks to Dujin for the review sample.