Choroszy Modelbud 1/72 Fiat G.5 built for a SAMI review article in 2004.

The Kit.

The kit is supplied in the customary blue/white Choroszy Modelbud box, with a laser printed colour profile glued onto the lid. The resin kit parts are all neatly packed in small plastic bags, with an instruction sheet and small decal sheet. The quality of the casting is just what we've come to expect from Choroszy, nice sharp trailing edges, neatly scribed panel lines and beautifully rendered fabric effect on the fuselage, wings and tail surfaces. A clear sheet of plastic is supplied from which to make the small cockpit windscreens.

Instructions.

The instruction sheet is carried over 2 sheets of folded A4 and consists of a brief history (with occasional grammatical and spelling errors), some technical data, an assembly sequence of 5 diagrams, a 3-view drawing, one colour scheme and on the last page, a long list of available Modelbud kits. What this sheet does not tell you is that this model matches the second of four prototypes, due to slight differences in tailfin and windscreen shapes.

Construction.

In the time honoured fashion of resin kits, some preparation of the main parts is needed before construction can start. In this instance, careful removal of the excess resin moulding & pouring blocks from the fuselage halves was necessary to get a good clean join. A clean up of the wing leading edges was also required, in this example the starboard wing contained a few air bubbles that needed filling. To make their painting and assembly just that bit easier, the rest of the smaller pieces were attached to a piece of card using double-sided tape. After a coat of primer, the cockpit area and detail parts were painted and assembled. No colours are given for the interior, so I used a pale grey base colour, with items picked out in either silver or black. Interestingly, the front cockpit, according to the instructions, does not have any flight controls. The instrument panel in the rear cockpit needed a fair amount of trimming to fit. The fuselage halves were then joined together and the rest of the kit is quickly assembled, only a minimal amount of clean up was necessary on the wing to fuselage mating surfaces. The undercarriage was also attached, after carefully trapping each wheel between the two spat halves. There was a bit of trimming needed to get the support struts to fit, but the 3-view drawing helped here. It also helped to show that the undercarriage is actually a bit too long, by 2mm in fact. After a coat of Halfords grey primer, the model was then sprayed with an overall coat of Alclad 2 White Aluminium. The nicely cast engine and exhaust is painted and fixed in place following by the most delicate item, the engine cowl. I was able to remove this item from its casting block without too much trouble. The two small windscreens were cut out of the clear sheet material, using the 3-view as a guide. Just the oil cooler and the Venturi tube to go on and there you have it... one complete model.

Accuracy.

With a span of 147mm, a height of 36.5mm and a length of 110mm, the kit scales out to 10.58m span, 7.92m length and a height of 2.6m. According to a recent Aerofan article, the 8.4 length given on the instruction sheet is closer to the longer 1st prototype when it was fitted with an in-line engine. This second version was actually 8.14m, with a span of 10.48 metres and a height of 2.46m. Despite the discrepancy with regards to the length and the height (the height can easily be corrected by shortening the undercarriage), photos in the Aerofan article show that this model captures the clean, unfussy lines of this touring aircraft extremley well.

Colour Options.

Just the one scheme, an overall silver complete with minimal markings, namely the rudder tricolor and fuselage fasce.

Decals.

Again, a very simple sheet. Just the rudder decal, serial number and fuselage fasce. I opted to paint the red area of the rudder, using just the green and white decal parts. Rating 9/10.

Conclusions/Recommendation.

Until reading the Aerofan article, I had never known of the existence of this aircraft. It was the second project designed by ing. Gabrielli for Fiat, others include the more widely known Fiat G.50, G.55 and G.91, amongst others. Any one interested in these aircraft would do well to consider adding this one to the collection. As is always the case with Choroszy Modelbud, who seem to have captured a niche in producing such interesting and less well known aircraft, it is a superbly executed model, very easy to build and is therefore very highly recommended.

Many thanks to Choroszy Modelbud for the review sample.