Built for the SAMI magazine sometime in mid 2006. There is an image of this aircraft sporting the same dark brown colour scheme as the earlier PM1 & PM2, so it is perhaps time for me to update this model!


Piero Magni 3/1


This is one of four variants of this very interesting aircraft to be released by Chororszy Modelbud. The others being the PM1, PM2 and PM 3/4. They are very similar in appearance, although the PM1 & 2 are slightly smaller and have an overall dark brown scheme. All the kit parts are resin and very well cast with hardly any air bubbles. Only a small amount of cleaning up is required after removing parts from their casting blocks. The decal sheet is quite small and nicely printed. The instruction sheet describes the construction process adequately enough, but only 'pearl grey', 'natural metal' and 'black' are given for the aircraft's overall colour scheme. Internal colours will have to be guessed at.


After painting up the interior (I chose a wood effect), the fuselage halves are joined together. The spine is moulded integrally with the port fuselage half, leaving a gap that needs to be filled when the starboard side is glued in place. Only then can the rest of rest of the kit parts be attached, apart from the cowling & struts, which are not attached until painting is complete. Care needs to be taken to avoid knocking off that tail wheel, it's extremely fragile!


For the 'pearl grey' scheme, I used Xtracrylix XA1139. It looks to be about the right shade compared to photos of the PM 3/4 on display at the 'Museo nazionale della scienza e della tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci' in Milan. The cowling and propeller is sprayed with Alclad II Aluminium before attaching them to the model followed by the innovative wing support struts which doubled as an airbrake.


The decals were easy to apply to the smooth acrylic paint surface. The lettering is very faint however and tricolor is very brittle when dry, which meant a little touch up with paint when removing the excess carrier around the edge.


This attractive looking model was fun to build and its single colour scheme made it an easy one as well. The only tweak to perform was to adjust the strut ends where it joins onto the wing. Highly recommended, even for those who have not ventured into resin modelling.

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